Jury Convicts Pennsylvania Woman of Bank Fraud, Money Laundering, and Conspiracy

Press Release

Laundered Over $800,000 of the Proceeds of a Business Email Compromise Scheme that Defrauded a Cedar Rapids Church

An accountant and adjunct business instructor who laundered over $800,000 of the proceeds of a multi-state business email compromise scheme was convicted by a jury after a three-day trial in federal court in Cedar Rapids.

Margo Ann Williams, age 62, from Scranton, Pennsylvania, was convicted of one count of bank fraud, three counts of money laundering, three counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, and one count of money laundering conspiracy. The verdict was returned this morning following about five hours of jury deliberations.

The evidence at trial showed that, between December 2022 and July 2023, five victims-a Cedar Rapids church, two businesses, a non-profit, and an individual-had their electronic payments misdirected due to hacked email accounts. The email accounts were hacked while the victims were in the process of making large wire and automatic clearinghouse ("ACH") transactions to others. The victims received "spoofed" emails that falsely appeared to come from legitimate and trusted sources. The fraudulent emails contained instructions to change the routing information for the wire and ACH transactions. Unbeknownst to the victims, those accounts listed in the new instructions belonged to Williams. After receiving "spoofed" emails, the victims instructed their banks to wire the funds according to the new payment instructions. Williams received the funds into bank accounts she controlled, and then she rapidly transferred the stolen money to other bank accounts that she controlled. Williams eventually transferred stolen funds to two national cryptocurrency exchanges and an individual in Florida.

For example, in June 2023, a Cedar Rapids church was engaged in a $7 million renovation of its campus. The hackers compromised the email account of the project's architect and caused the church to receive "spoofed" emails in which the email domain of the project's general contractor was slightly changed. As a result, the church representatives thought they were engaged in email correspondence with the project's general contractor when, in truth, unknown individuals were impersonating the general contractor's employees. As a result, the church unwittingly wired over $466,000 to Williams's shell corporation, "MBCI & Evercorp, LLC." Other victims in the business email compromise scheme included a hotel manager in Colorado, a large non-profit in Washington state, a self-employed homebuilder in Montana, and a general commercial contractor in Pennsylvania.

During the scheme, Williams repeatedly opened bank accounts at major national banks, including one in the name of her shell corporation. As the banks discovered the fraud and closed the accounts, Williams would continue to open new accounts at other banks in an effort to continue to perpetrate the fraud. Williams claimed at trial that she was doing so at the direction of a famous British actor with whom she had formed a romantic relationship. Williams earned approximately $25,000 from the scheme. Williams made many personal purchases with the stolen money, including an Apple Watch and a Louis Vuitton handbag.

Sentencing before United States District Court Judge Leonard T. Strand will be set after a presentence report is prepared. Williams remains free on bond previously set pending sentencing. Williams faces a possible maximum sentence of 140 years' imprisonment, a $4.25 million fine, and 5 years of supervised release following any imprisonment.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Timothy L. Vavricek and Kyndra A. Lundquist and was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.

The case file number is 23-CR-64.

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Updated September 13, 2024