A central New York man is currently in custody for turning $1.7 million worth of fraudulent checks into Bitcoin (BTC).
According to official District of Rhode Island court documents, Tushal Rathod has been charged with wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Court documents show an affidavit by FBI special agent Samuel Morgan detailing Rathod’s allegations.
From 2022 to 2024, Morgan alleges Rathod collected nearly $2 million in fraudulent checks and business email compromise (BEC) fraud.
According to the affidavit,
“During a BEC, scammers obtain the login credentials of an email user of a business email account. Typically, the credentials are obtained during a ‘spearphishing’ cyber campaign.”
In a BEC, thieves use the stolen credentials to monitor e-mail transactions, stepping in with fraudulent communications over sensitive matters like upcoming financial transactions. BECs sometimes even involve malware.
Rathod allegedly then spread the fraudulent funds out across seven accounts in six different banks. Furthermore, most of those funds were then converted into BTC.
Rathod allegedly worked with several co-conspirators and took on different names to different people.
Says Morgan,
“In my training and experience, I know that fraudsters and individuals who conduct BEC schemes often work with a vast network of money launderers to help them ‘clean’ funds and then re-integrate the ‘cleaned’ funds into the economy so that the funds can be used free from the taint of criminal activity. This allows the scammers to profit from their fraudulent conduct and to avoid getting caught.”
Rathod was arrested and arraigned last Wednesday. He is currently awaiting his detention hearing in custody.
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