An accountant and adjunct business instructor who laundered more than $800,000 from a multistate business email compromise scheme by hacking five victims’ email accounts — including a Cedar Rapids church — was convicted by a jury following a three-day federal trial.
Margo Ann Williams, 62, of Scranton, Penn., was found guilty in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa of one count of bank fraud, three counts of money laundering, three counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity and one count of money laundering conspiracy. The jury returned the verdict Thursday after deliberating about five hours.
According to trial evidence, St. Ludmila Catholic Church in Cedar Rapids, two businesses, a large nonprofit and an individual — all from other states — had their electronic payments misdirected between December 2022 and July 2023, as a result of hacked email accounts.
The email accounts were hacked while the victims were in the process of making large wire and automatic clearinghouse — ACH — transactions to others, according to court documents. The victims received “spoofed” emails that falsely appeared to be from “legitimate and trusted” sources.
The fraudulent emails contained instructions to change the routing information for the transactions, court documents stated. Those accounts listed in the new instructions belonged to Williams. After receiving the “spoofed” emails, the victims asked their banks to wire the funds according to the new instructions, without knowing the payments were going to Williams.
The money went into bank accounts Williams controlled and then she would rapidly transfer the stolen money to other bank accounts she also controlled, according to trial evidence. One of the exhibits used at trial showed a type of flow chart for the transactions that went into Williams’ accounts.
Williams eventually transferred stolen funds to two national cryptocurrency exchanges and an individual in Florida, according to trial testimony.
In June 2023, St. Ludmila’s was in the middle of making a $7 million renovation to its campus. The hackers compromised the email account of the project’s architect and caused the church to receive the “spoofed” emails, which altered the email domain of the project’s general contractor.
As a result, the church representatives thought they were exchanging emails with the general contractor, but it was actually “unknown individuals impersonating the general contractor’s employees,” according to testimony.
The church “unwittingly” wired more than $466,000 to Williams’ shell corporation, “MBCI & Evercorp, LLC,” according to court documents.
The other four victims in the scheme included a hotel manager in Colorado, a large nonprofit in Washington state, a self-employed homebuilder in Montana and a general commercial contractor in Pennsylvania.
During the scheme, Williams repeatedly opened bank accounts at major national banks, including one in the name of her shell corporation, according to prosecutors. When the banks discovered the fraud and closed the accounts, Williams would just open new accounts at different banks to continue the fraud.
Williams claimed at trial that she was doing so at the direction of a famous British actor with whom she had formed a romantic relationship, prosecutors said. She earned about $25,000 from the scheme.
Her personal purchases from the scheme proceeds included an Apple Watch and a Louis Vuitton handbag.
U.S. District Judge Leonard Strand will set sentencing after a presentence report is completed. Williams remains free on bond previously set pending sentencing.
She faces up to 140 years in federal prison, a $4.25 million fine and five years of supervised release following her prison term.
Assistant U.S. attorneys, Timothy Vavricek and Kyndra Lundquist, are prosecuting the case and it was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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Margo Ann Williams, 62, of Scranton, Penn., was found guilty in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa of one count of bank fraud, three counts of money laundering, three counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity and one count of money laundering conspiracy. The jury returned the verdict Thursday after deliberating about five hours.
According to trial evidence, St. Ludmila Catholic Church in Cedar Rapids, two businesses, a large nonprofit and an individual — all from other states — had their electronic payments misdirected between December 2022 and July 2023, as a result of hacked email accounts.
The email accounts were hacked while the victims were in the process of making large wire and automatic clearinghouse — ACH — transactions to others, according to court documents. The victims received “spoofed” emails that falsely appeared to be from “legitimate and trusted” sources.
The fraudulent emails contained instructions to change the routing information for the transactions, court documents stated. Those accounts listed in the new instructions belonged to Williams. After receiving the “spoofed” emails, the victims asked their banks to wire the funds according to the new instructions, without knowing the payments were going to Williams.
The money went into bank accounts Williams controlled and then she would rapidly transfer the stolen money to other bank accounts she also controlled, according to trial evidence. One of the exhibits used at trial showed a type of flow chart for the transactions that went into Williams’ accounts.
Williams eventually transferred stolen funds to two national cryptocurrency exchanges and an individual in Florida, according to trial testimony.
In June 2023, St. Ludmila’s was in the middle of making a $7 million renovation to its campus. The hackers compromised the email account of the project’s architect and caused the church to receive the “spoofed” emails, which altered the email domain of the project’s general contractor.
As a result, the church representatives thought they were exchanging emails with the general contractor, but it was actually “unknown individuals impersonating the general contractor’s employees,” according to testimony.
The church “unwittingly” wired more than $466,000 to Williams’ shell corporation, “MBCI & Evercorp, LLC,” according to court documents.
The other four victims in the scheme included a hotel manager in Colorado, a large nonprofit in Washington state, a self-employed homebuilder in Montana and a general commercial contractor in Pennsylvania.
During the scheme, Williams repeatedly opened bank accounts at major national banks, including one in the name of her shell corporation, according to prosecutors. When the banks discovered the fraud and closed the accounts, Williams would just open new accounts at different banks to continue the fraud.
Williams claimed at trial that she was doing so at the direction of a famous British actor with whom she had formed a romantic relationship, prosecutors said. She earned about $25,000 from the scheme.
Her personal purchases from the scheme proceeds included an Apple Watch and a Louis Vuitton handbag.
U.S. District Judge Leonard Strand will set sentencing after a presentence report is completed. Williams remains free on bond previously set pending sentencing.
She faces up to 140 years in federal prison, a $4.25 million fine and five years of supervised release following her prison term.
Assistant U.S. attorneys, Timothy Vavricek and Kyndra Lundquist, are prosecuting the case and it was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Jury convicts accountant who laundered over $800,000 in spoof email scheme
A federal jury convicted an accountant/business instructor who laundered over $800,000 in a spoof email scheme. One of her targets was a Cedar Rapids Catholic church that was in the middle of a renovation project.
www.thegazette.com
