Woman To Serve Four Years in Prison for Role in $800,000 Business Email Hack That Tricked Victims Into Sending Fraudulent Bank Wires

An accountant and adjunct business instructor from Scranton, Pennsylvania, is sentenced to federal prison for her involvement in a multi-state business email compromise scheme.

In a statement , the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa says that 63-year-old Margo Ann Williams laundered $800,000 of proceeds from a scheme that was carried out between December 2022 and July 2023.

According to evidence presented at the trial, the email accounts of the five victims – a Cedar Rapids church, two businesses, a non-profit and an individual – were hacked while they were in the process of making large wire and automatic clearinghouse (ACH) transfers. 

The victims received spoofed emails containing instructions to change the routing information for the wire and ACH transfers. Believing that the emails were from legitimate and trusted sources, the victims instructed their banks to wire the funds according to the supposed new payment instructions.

The funds were rerouted to bank accounts that Williams controlled.

She subsequently relocated the funds to other bank accounts under her control before transferring the money to two crypto exchanges and another person in Florida. 

The banks discovered William’s fraudulent activities and closed her accounts, but she kept opening new ones at other banks in an effort to keep the scheme alive. She earned approximately $25,000 from the operation and spent the funds on many personal purchases, including an Apple watch and a luxury bag.

Williams, who claimed that she perpetrated the scheme at the direction of a famous British actor with whom she became romantically involved, was sentenced to four years in prison. She’s also ordered to pay $594,037 in restitution to her victims and must also serve a three-year term of supervised release following her imprisonment.

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