Month: September 2022

Source: United States Department of Justice News

ST. LOUIS – U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp on Tuesday sentenced a St. Louis man to five years and 10 months in prison for using stolen or fake identification documents to buy, lease or steal three cars and a $5,600 puppy.

Samuel Stoddard, 26, pleaded guilty in June to eight felony counts in two criminal cases: aggravated identity theft, identity theft, possession of a stolen motor vehicle, access device fraud, possession of five or more identification documents, possession of document-making implements, possession of falsely made securities and interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle.

Stoddard admitted being found in possession of a series of fake or stolen identification documents and vehicle registration materials after a court-authorized search of his home in St. Louis. He’d already created a fake Missouri driver’s license that another person used to rent a 2019 Chevrolet Malibu and a fake Illinois title for the car to prevent the rental company from getting it back.

After the search, he used a fake temporary driver’s license in the name of a Webster Groves man to buy a $5,600 German Shepherd puppy from a Lake St. Louis company. He used other fake identification documents to lease a 2021 Volvo XC90 worth more than $56,000 from a Kansas car dealer and buy another XC90 worth $41,000 from a St. Louis County dealer.

Stoddard also forged the name of another individual and used a fraudulently obtained credit card to pay towing and impound fees for a 2020 Acura RDX. The vehicle was in the custody of a St. Louis tow yard because it had been reported as having been fraudulently purchased from a St. Louis area dealership.

After his arrest on the federal charges, he used another jail inmate to help him conceal the proceeds of his crimes as well as the material he used to commit them, according to his guilty plea.

After Stoddard fled from federal pretrial supervision and became a fugitive, he continued his criminal activities in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia before he was arrested and returned to federal custody in Missouri.

For three years, Stoddard “just kept engaging in fraud on top of fraud,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Berry said during the sentencing hearing Tuesday.

The Missouri Department of Revenue, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Secret Service and police departments in the Missouri jurisdictions of Manchester, O’Fallon, St. Charles, St. Charles County, St. Louis, St. Louis County and Webster Groves investigated this case.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Berry prosecuted the case.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

PITTSBURGH – A former resident of Donora, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced in federal court to 66-1/2 months on his conviction of federal narcotics charges, United States Attorney Cindy K. Chung announced today.

Chief United States District Judge Mark R. Hornak imposed the sentence on Jamie Lightfoot, Sr., 51, currently incarcerated at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center.

According to information presented to the court, Lightfoot Sr., even though incarcerated, remained involved in a drug conspiracy involving his son, Jamie Lightfoot, Sr., and other co-defendants. Lightfoot Sr. was also involved in a conspiracy to smuggle steroids into prison during his incarceration.

United States Attorney Chung commended the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pennsylvania State Police, with assistance from the South Strabane Police Department, the Elizabeth Borough Police Department, the Penn Hills Police Department, and the Perryopolis Police Department, for the investigation leading to the successful prosecution of Lightfoot Sr.

This prosecution is a result of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles high-level drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations that threaten communities throughout the United States. OCDETF uses a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach that leverages the strengths of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies against criminal networks.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

SCRANTON – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that on September 19, 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed both the conviction and 210-month sentence of Anthony Diaz, age 54, formerly of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.  That sentence was imposed by United States District Court Judge Malachy E. Mannion on March 26, 2021, after Diaz was convicted by a jury on multiple counts of wire fraud and mail fraud.

According to United States Attorney Gerard M. Karam, from approximately 2008 through April 2015, Diaz owned and operated Financial Planners Group of America, a financial planning business in East Stroudsburg and Scotrun, Pennsylvania.  Diaz persuaded his clients to invest in high risk, illiquid “alternative investment products,” including real estate investment trusts, business development companies, oil and gas drilling companies, and equipment leasing companies.  Diaz convinced clients to invest their life savings in the alternative investments through a series of false representations, including that the investments were low-risk, with guaranteed protection of principle and guaranteed rates of return, and that the investments were liquid, giving investors access to their funds in an emergency.

On appeal, Diaz asserted a litany of challenges to his conviction and sentence, prompting the Court of Appeals to remark, “On appeal, parties sometimes throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. Here, nothing does.”  The Court of Appeals found that the government properly presented evidence of the full scope of Diaz’s scheme to defraud, including conduct occurring after the wires and mailings that were specifically charged in the indictment.  For instance, evidence showed that Diaz was terminated by five broker-dealers and permitted to resign by a sixth broker-dealer.  Diaz’s former employees testified that they were ordered to conceal his firings and lie to the clients about his changes between broker-dealers.  Diaz also  was suspended by the Certified Financial Planners Board of Standards in 2013, and under investigation by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Pennsylvania Department of Banking, both of whom ultimately barred Diaz from the securities industry in 2015.  Diaz’s clients testified that he failed to disclose and concealed the true nature of his firings, suspension, and regulatory investigations.

The Court of Appeals upheld the admission of that evidence, finding the concealment of such information from clients to be intrinsic to Diaz’s offenses.  Likewise, testimony that Diaz and a former employee destroyed documentation to stymy a regulatory investigation was deemed properly admitted, despite coming to light for the first time mid-trial.

In affirming Diaz’s sentence, the Court of Appeals upheld a sentencing enhancement imposed by the District Court for defrauding at least 25 victims, holding that although the District Court did not specifically identify each victim at sentencing, it was entitled to draw reasonable inferences from the record in support of the enhancement.  The Court of Appeals likewise upheld four other sentencing enhancements for engaging in a scheme that involved sophisticated means, violating securities laws (even though no securities law charge was included in the indictment), having an aggravating role in directing others to engage in criminal activity, and obstruction of justice for committing perjury when testifying during trial.  Overall, the Court of Appeals found Diaz’s sentence substantively reasonable, noting that the District Court sentenced him more than four years below his advisory guidelines.

The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Assistant United States Attorneys Phillip Caraballo and Robert O’Hara prosecuted the case.

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Source: United States Department of Justice News

HOUSTON – A 47-year-old Colorado man has admitted to threatening a woman with releasing sexually-explicit images unless she moved with him across the country, announced U.S. Attorney Jennifer B. Lowery.

Moses Cano pleaded guilty to one count of stalking.

Cano and the victim dated for a brief amount of time. At the end of that relationship, Cano made threats to her if she did not agree to come to Colorado with him. The victim refused. In retaliation, he then sent sexually-explicit images of the victim to her place of employment and several of her friends.

As part of his plea, he admitted he took over her Facebook account and used it to send the images and other messages to her contacts. He also posted a sexually-explicit video of the victim to a well-known adult pornography site.

In distress, the victim contacted authorities.

Sentencing has been set for Nov. 30. At that time, Cano faces up to five years in federal prison and a $250,000 maximum possible fine. He has been and will remain in custody pending that hearing.

The FBI conducted the investigation with the assistance of Matagorda County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sherri L. Zack is prosecuting the case.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced that Taylor Thompson, 27; Tiana Fairfax, 29, both of Philadelphia, PA, and Theodore Robinson, 29, of Upper Darby, PA, were arrested and charged by Indictment with seven counts of wire fraud in connection with their scheme to defraud their employer, a national airline carrier, out of ticket fare revenue by recruiting customers to book inexpensive flights which they didn’t intend to use, upgrading those customers to more expensive flights which the customers actually wanted by using supervisors’ computer access codes, and then charging the customers a ‘commission’ and pocketing that money rather than charging the customer the full price of the upgraded flight.

The Indictment alleges that in 2017 and 2018, defendant Thompson was an employee in a supervisory role with a major U.S. airline headquartered in Florida, and defendants Fairfax and Robinson worked as customer service agents with the same airline. In those jobs, the defendants had access to the airline’s computerized reservation system and were able to book flight reservations; supervisors like Thompson had the ability to use a special code at their discretion to make changes in the reservation system without charging customers the additional costs associated with modified reservations. In general, if a passenger changed their itinerary, airline policy required that the passenger pay the full price of the modified itinerary, which was often more expensive than the itinerary that the passenger originally booked. Although supervisors had the ability to modify a reservation without assessing those charges, under Airline policy, those charges were only to be waived under extenuating circumstances, such as a death in the passenger’s family.

In March 2018, Thompson allegedly approached another employee and co-schemer about participating in a scheme to skim money from airline fares, and asked that employee for access to their Cash App account in order to receive payments directly from customers. Thompson made money from the scheme by charging customers for whom she booked and modified a flight reservation more for the flight than the price of the original itinerary (that is, the amount that was paid to the airline), but less than the true cost of the new, modified itinerary. The defendant retained the additional amount paid to her by the customer as a commission for her services. Defendants Fairfax and Robinson allegedly joined the scheme by modifying flight reservations for customers without charging them the difference in cost by utilizing Thompson’s supervisory airline credentials. In 2018, when Thompson was terminated by the airline, a second co-schemer was approached to join the scheme in order to utilize their supervisory credentials in order to modify flight reservations.

According to the Indictment, between December 2017 and August 2018, all three defendants along with the two co-schemers modified more than 1,700 flight reservations without compensating the airline for the increased cost of those modified reservations, for a total loss to the airline of more than $283,000.

“As alleged, these defendants used access and privileges granted by virtue of their employment to cheat the airline reservation system and skim money off the top for themselves,” said U.S. Attorney Romero. “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to investigate and prosecute fraud schemes wherever they occur.”

“Supplementing your paycheck by scamming your employer is a criminally bad career move,” said Jacqueline Maguire, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division. “Fraud is never the ticket to lasting financial gain, as these defendants have now discovered. Instead, it’s landed them in court to answer for their alleged actions. The FBI stands ready to investigate financial crimes wherever they may occur.”   

The case was investigated by Federal Bureau of Investigation, and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Jessica Rice.

An indictment, information, or criminal complaint is an accusation. A defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.