Scammer Gets Scammed…by the Law 🚔

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Meet Gabriel Waters, a 54-year-old Ohio man who’s about to become intimately familiar with the inside of a prison cell. And not just any prison cell, but one he’ll be calling home for nearly five years. That’s right, folks, this guy’s going down for his role in a business email scam that netted a whopping $547,455. I mean, who needs a 401k when you can just steal from unsuspecting companies? 🤑

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Waters was part of a wire fraud and money laundering scheme that involved sending fake emails that looked suspiciously like they came from the corporate accounts of employees who actually controlled the finances of the victim companies. It’s like they say: “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”…or in this case, the sincerest form of felony. 😂

The scammers (because, let’s be real, that’s what they are) bought domain names that were just a hair’s breadth away from the real deal, and then used those fake email accounts to convince employees, customers, or partners to send money to a bank account that just so happened to be controlled by the scammers themselves. It’s like a bad game of telephone, but with more money laundering. 📞

Waters was the mastermind (ahem) behind setting up the bank accounts in the US, receiving the ill-gotten gains, and then laundering the funds to different accounts before converting them to cryptocurrency and sending them overseas to his email fraudster friends. Because, you know, cryptocurrency is totally untraceable…oh wait, no it’s not. 🤑

US District Judge Sharion Aycock was not having it, and sentenced Waters to 57 months of imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised release. And, because karma’s a you-know-what, Waters also has to pay back the $547,455.80 he helped steal. That’s a lot of restitution. 💸

But wait, there’s more! An accountant and adjunct business instructor from Pennsylvania (because who doesn’t love a good accountant-turned-money-launderer story?) was also recently sentenced to federal prison for laundering $800,000 of proceeds from a similar scheme. It’s like they say: “those who can’t do, teach…and also launder money.” 📚

The victims, bless their hearts, received spoofed emails while trying to make large wire and automatic clearinghouse (ACH) transfers, directing them to transfer the funds to bank accounts controlled by the fraudster. Because, you know, that’s exactly what you want to do when you’re trying to make a large financial transaction: follow the instructions of a random email. 🙄

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2025-06-16 20:01