The feds have named a Rhode Island man they are saying operated as a “money mule” for foreign-based romance and elder scams that laundered $35 million in ill-gotten beneficial properties.
“We are already ‘money mules’ complicit in their offenses,” Craig Clayton, the Rhode Island man charged with placing his monetary abilities towards large fraud, allegedly wrote to his Ukraine-based co-conspirator in a March 2020 e-mail, based on a courtroom affidavit. “It just opens us up to charges.”
Clayton, 73, of Cranston, R.I., operated Rochart Consulting, a “virtual CFO” operation that supplied monetary providers for start-ups and fintech operations, out of his dwelling.
He was arrested and appeared in federal courtroom in Boston Thursday.
He pleaded not responsible earlier than Chief U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge M. Page Kelley to expenses of working an intensive cash laundering scheme by which he created round 80 completely different financial institution accounts — primarily in Massachusetts and Rhode Island banks — for 65 completely different “shell” firms whose sole objective was to launder tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} international operatives squeezed out of U.S. victims, based on an affidavit.
Clayton was launched after he posted a $100,000 unsecured bond.
His enterprise web site, which carries the slogan “Think Straight, Talk Straight,” is a one-page resume for potential purchasers, by which he as a digital chief monetary officer can be “a business partner. An experienced finance and qualified accounting professional providing a comprehensive service.”
The website, which lists him because the proprietor within the supply code, states that he has 20 years of expertise as a CFO within the U.S., Australia and in Southeast Asia who makes a speciality of startups within the software program, ecommerce, sustainable and renewables expertise and monetary expertise fields.
It says he’s a former chartered accountant for Arthur Andersen, the Chicago accounting agency that went belly-up when its questionable accounting practices had been uncovered within the Enron scandal of 2002.
“I know that online fraud schemes, including romance scams and elder fraud, are often committed by perpetrators outside the United States,” wrote Special Agent Lori Robinson, an investigator for the Department of Homeland Security, in her affidavit supporting the costs. “These schemes, however, frequently involve the use of the United States banking system and of conspirators in the United States to launder and/or access the fraud proceeds.”
The Herald final yr advised the story of Cindy Tsai, one sufferer of an identical so-called “romance scam.” In the bottom level of her life — having been recognized with abdomen most cancers and having her husband depart her — met “Jimmy” on-line and thought she had discovered a pal who cared. Instead, she ended up dropping $2.5 million within the rip-off.
Robinson, in her 61-page, extraordinarily detailed affidavit, stated that Clayton operated as a “straw man” who created financial institution accounts that scammers would direct their victims — who all have comparable tales to Tsai — to deposit their cash into.
These accounts can be connected to pretend firms like “Providence Sanitizer Inc.” or “Sustainable Agriculture Technology Inc.” established in all places, from Delaware to Wyoming, that had no actual enterprise operation nor any actual homeowners listed, only a “manager” named Craig Clayton.
As Craig allegedly described it to an secret agent, ““we incorporate a company, set-up a bank account, … and the money starts rolling.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”