Seven Individuals Sentenced To Prison For Online Fraud Scams

William Byrnes

Seven defendants were sentenced for their roles in online fraud schemes involving counterfeit checks, “mystery shopper” websites and work-from-home scams. Funso Hassan, 27, of Ibadan, Nigeria, and Anthony Shane Jeffers, 44, of Maryville, Tennessee, each pleaded guilty on April 12, 2016, to one count of conspiracy to commit identity theft and theft of government property and one count of use of mail and an interstate facility to distribute proceeds of a racketeering activity.

Hassan and Jeffers were each sentenced to 120 months in prison. Ann Louise Franzen, 70, of Kiln, Mississippi; Gary Melvin Barnard, 64, of Palestine, Texas; Michele Gayle Fee, 55, of Stockton, California; Tanya Lynn Thomas, 52, of Turlock, California; and Shawn Ann White, 44, of Manteca, California, previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit identity theft and theft of government property. Franzen, Barnard, Fee, Thomas, and White were each sentenced to 60 months in prison. The defendants were sentenced yesterday by Chief U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. of the Southern District of Mississippi and restitution for all defendants will be determined at a later date.

According to admissions made in connection with their plea agreements, all seven defendants were members of a large-scale international financial fraud conspiracy that included romance scams through on-line dating sites, check fraud, secret shopper schemes, and personal assistant work-from-home schemes. Some of the defendants started as romance scam victims before later becoming knowing participants in the counterfeit check fraud. Victims were sent checks with mystery shopper and personal assistant instructions. The checks, which were counterfeit, would bounce after the victims transmitted proceeds to various locations in the United States which were then laundered for transmission to Nigeria. Victims were then liable to their banks for the amount of checks and often hundreds of dollars in bank fees.

William H. Byrnes has achieved authoritative prominence with more than 20 books, treatise chapters and book supplements, 1,000 media articles, and the monthly subscriber Tax Facts Intelligence. Titles include: Lexis® Guide to FATCA Compliance, Foreign Tax and Trade Briefs, Practical Guide to U.S. Transfer Pricing, and Money Laundering, Asset Forfeiture; Recovery, and Compliance (a Global Guide). He is a principal author of the Tax Facts series. He was a Senior Manager, then Associate Director of international tax for Coopers and Lybrand, and practiced in Southern Africa, Western Europe, South East Asia, the Indian sub-continent, and the Caribbean. He has been commissioned by a number of governments on tax policy. Obtained the title of tenured law professor in 2005 at St. Thomas in Miami, and in 2008 the level of Associate Dean at Thomas Jefferson. William Byrnes pioneered online legal education in 1995, thereafter creating the first online LL.M. offered by an ABA accredited law school (International Taxation and Financial Services graduate program).

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