A former Truist branch employee is one of eight Georgia residents sentenced in a counterfeit check-cashing scheme that involved stolen check information, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia said Wednesday.
The “complex” check-cashing and kickback scheme ran from at least November 2021 to December 2022, prosecutors said. At the time, Mariarlene Brown, aka “Mati Mom,” 44, of Valdosta, worked at a Truist branch in that city.
In conspiring with Brown and others to commit bank fraud, William Allen Roberts, 27, of Valdosta, unlawfully obtained check information from Vincent Galliard, 41, of Sumter, South Carolina.
Galliard was a former U.S. Postal Service employee in South Carolina who sold checks he stole from the mail, prosecutors said. Roberts used the check information provided by Galliard to produce fraudulent checks.
Six others involved in the scheme recruited people to open Truist bank accounts and then got those people to provide their new Truist debit card and account information to those behind the scheme, “with the understanding that they would be paid for doing so,” prosecutors said.
That group of co-conspirators included Frederick Pernell Green, 27; Thomas Christopher Mitchell, 31; Calvin Dewayne McKeithen, aka “Supa,” 26; Dewayne Rasheen Butler, aka “Guwapo,” 26; Tyler Khershad Jones, aka “LA Clippers,” 24; and Davontay Wiseman, aka “Vonn,” 28.
Those six then passed the account information on to Roberts, who would write checks to those individuals in various amounts. Roberts, with Brown’s help, deposited checks into those accounts, and Brown made sure Roberts could withdraw cash from the accounts, according to prosecutors.
Roberts paid Brown for her help in the scheme, as well as the co-conspirators and account holders, prosecutors said. Green, Roberts, Mitchell, McKeithen, Jones, Butler and Wiseman kept most of each check that was deposited, prosecutors said.
Text messages the group members exchanged described the conspiracy, and investigators also discovered photos of debit cards, account numbers, fraudulent checks, cash obtained from the check deposits “and a custom-made diamond ring in the shape of the Truist logo worn by Green,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Brown was sentenced to 33 months in prison, five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $390,475.84 in restitution to Truist on Oct. 9, after she pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
Seven others – all except Galliard – also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, were sentenced to prison time and ordered to pay Truist restitution in the same amount.
Galliard pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a South Carolina case and was sentenced to serve 30 months in prison, along with five years of supervised release, prosecutors said.
Galliard was ordered to pay $149,692.14 in restitution divided among The Citizens Bank, First Citizens Bank, South Atlantic Bank, TD Bank, The Conway National Bank and Bank of America, according to a court filing.
“Individuals who participate in check-cashing and kickback schemes will face imprisonment and other penalties,” U.S. Attorney Will Keyes said in the press release. “Investigators from the Secret Service and the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office worked to unravel this criminal network, ultimately preventing further theft and helping us ensure accountability for the defendants.”
Bank regulators seek to bolster their efforts to address check fraud, which has grown “substantially” in the past several years, Michelle Bowman, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision, said in June.
Although check use has dropped, check fraud hasn’t diminished in tandem. “Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of real or attempted check fraud transactions grew nearly fourfold, even as the number of checks paid fell by more than 18 percent from 2018 to 2021,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta reported this year.
