A man from Ghana and an accused cohort in Florida are under indictment in Pittsburgh in an email scam that cost an unnamed Washington, D.C., university some $600,000 through a fraudulent Pittsburgh-based Bank of New York Mellon wire transfer, federal prosecutors said.
The FBI calls such crimes “business email compromise” schemes and they are often carried about by fraudsters from West Africa. Several other similar cases have been prosecuted in Pittsburgh in recent years involving culprits from Ghana and other West African nations.
The latest case involves David Kakra Mensah, 30, a Ghana national who entered the U.S. in August in Oregon, and Charles Wilson Stout, 65, of Ocala, Fla.
Both were charged in an FBI complaint in August and prosecutors last month brought an indictment on money-laundering charges against the two. The case was unsealed Oct. 4 in U.S. District Court after the defendants were taken into U.S. custody.
An FBI affidavit from August says Mensah and Stout targeted the university through an account the institution held at Bank of New York Mellon in Pittsburgh that resulted in a loss of $603,029 that was then laundered through cryptocurrency accounts Mensah set up.
The FBI said that Mensah is a member of an organized crime group that targets people in the U.S. through romance fraud schemes to steal money and to help launder money stolen from other victims.
Business email compromise schemes typically target companies, non-profits, real estate firms, universities and other entities that use wire transfers to conduct business. Usually a scammer gains access to an employee’s email account and then poses as that employee in requesting or authorizing a wire transfer to an account held by the fraudsters.
From April 2022 through June 2022, conspirators working with Mensah and Stout gained access to a university email account and then opened shell corporations, bank accounts and cryptocurrency accounts to facilitate the bogus wire transfer, the grand jury said.
The fraud started on April 18, 2022, when Stout opened a Wells Fargo account in Florida and a week later set up a shell corporation called ARG Foods-FL, according to the indictment. The following month he opened an account at Gemini, an online cryptocurrency platform, as well as a business bank account for the fake corporation.
Mensah and others then directed Stout to use the new accounts to launder money stolen from the university. In various email exchanges, Stout expressed his concerns about the scheme, saying he could “end up in jail for money laundering” and asking his African cohorts if they will visit him in federal prison.
The fraudsters fooled the university and the bank through a fake email. A conspirator connected with Mensah sent a fraudulent email purportedly from a university employee identified only as F.B. to another university employee named A.O. The email asked for an advance of $603,029 to be sent from the university to ARG Foods as part of a fictitious investor relationship, the grand jury said.
A.O. then sent a fax on university letterhead to Bank of New York Mellon asking for the wire transfer.
The bank approved it and sent the money to ARG Foods’ account, after which Stout transferred it to his own account and ultimately to his Gemini crypto account.
After that, Mensah, Stout and others bought cryptocurrency and then transferred it from Gemini to other crypto accounts controlled by Mensah, the grand jury said.
Mensah and Stout are both charged with money laundering conspiracy and face up to 20 years in prison.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
