FBI: With one email, Brookhaven man made off with $566,000

[TexasTowelie]

With a single email, a Brookhaven man persuaded county government officials in Kansas to pay him more than half a million dollars that should have gone to a road contractor, federal prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint.

George S. James, 48, sent an email purporting to be from the CEO of the contractor, the Department of Justice said in a news release. The email came with a form requesting payment to a new bank account, the criminal complaint says.

Apparently with no questions asked, two weeks later Sedgwick County paid $566,000 to the account. Sometime after that, the real contractor asked the county why he hadn’t been paid.

That’s when the county began wondering where the money went. An electronic trail led federal investigators to an account held in the name of Rapid Repairs and Consultants at a Georgia bank, the DOJ said. Surveillance photos showed an individual matching the description of James conducting ATM and counter transactions for the account in Georgia, according to the criminal affidavit filed by an FBI agent.

Read more: http://investigations.blog.ajc.com/2017/01/31/fbi-with-one-email-brookhaven-man-made-off-with-566000/

[lapfog_1]

1. If he had been a bit smarter

he would have set up dozens of offshore accounts at different banks under different names and almost immediately wired the money (in odd amounts from $2000 to $9000) and then funneled to money from those to other accounts and then billed those fictitious companies for computer and consulting services (itemized for things like web pages and advertising), paid taxes on that income and shuttled it back to himself... but not all of it, leaving some doubt in investigators minds as to whether he was just a consultant or the crook.

He would have only netted about $300,000, but might have avoided prosecution.

Of course, to pull this off the original email directing Sedgwick County (the place of my birth) to pay the new bank account would have had to been untraceable (this is doable).