Rochester Man Timothy Wadsworth Sentenced to 51 Months for Fraud and Money Laundering Scheme Involving Stripe and Bitcoin, With Losses of About $2.06 Million
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York announced on October 23 that Timothy Wadsworth, 35, of Rochester, New York, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci Jr. to 51 months in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and was ordered to pay $810,965.19 in restitution. The court also ordered him to forfeit $810,956.19, representing the wire fraud proceeds he received. Prosecutors said the case is part of the Trump Administration's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.
Between March 2020 and September 2021, Wadsworth conspired with others to fraudulently obtain money, prosecutors said. He obtained credit card account numbers from co-conspirators and processed unauthorized transactions, transferring the money to bank accounts he controlled and moving a portion to his Coinbase account to purchase Bitcoin, which he then transferred to his co-conspirators. Between March 10 and May 15, 2020, using a Stripe merchant account, he attempted to process 310 payments totaling $1,673,578; 116 were initially successful, totaling $730,728.22, and none were authorized by the account holders.
Once the payments cleared, Wadsworth moved the funds from his Stripe account to accounts he held at HSBC and Evolve Federal Credit Union, then to Coinbase, where he bought Bitcoin and sent it to various external addresses, often in amounts exceeding $10,000 each. Between April 22 and April 28, 2020, for example, he transferred fraud proceeds from his Stripe account to his HSBC account three times, in amounts of $49,419.99, $45,501.85, and $53,496.75.
The schemes also targeted pandemic relief programs. Between May 13, 2020, and May 5, 2021, Wadsworth and others submitted nine false Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) applications; three were approved and $161,200 was paid into his accounts. Between March 7 and April 26, 2021, they applied for six Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans totaling $91,219, of which two were funded, for $20,833 and $20,416. From May 2020 through September 2021, he also fraudulently collected about $65,896 in unemployment benefits from New York State, Washington State, and the Department of Labor, though he was not eligible for any of it.
Wadsworth also took part in a romance fraud: a recently widowed woman who met a man on Facebook claiming to be an oil rig worker was directed to wire $42,000 for his travel expenses to Wadsworth's bank account, which she did on March 20, 2020. He defrauded six other victims out of an additional $26,000. In all, prosecutors said, the credit card fraud, the PPP and EIDL fraud, the unemployment fraud, and the other schemes caused about $2,059,893 in actual and intended losses.
U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo announced the sentencing. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Katelyn M. Hartford and investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, IRS Criminal Investigation, the New York State Department of Financial Services, and the New York State Department of Labor.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Genesee 河与纽约州 Rochester 市中心天际线，本案被告居住于 Rochester 并在当地联邦法院受审判刑（资料图）。照片：Andre Carrotflower，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。Photo: The Genesee River and the downtown skyline of Rochester, New York, where the defendant lived and was sentenced in federal court (file photo). Photo: Andre Carrotflower, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
