Bank fraudster who recruited accomplices on Instagram gets 9 years

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A fraudster who recruited people on Instagram to let him use their bank accounts to deposit stolen checks was sentenced to 9 years in prison on Thursday.

Chase “Trey” Griffin, 26, was also ordered to pay $307,000 in restitution at his sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton in Los Angeles.

The judge, a Barack Obama appointee, rejected the request by Griffin’s federal public defender to sentence him to just five years in prison because, as his lawyer argued, the fraud scheme to which he pleaded guilty was hardly the sophisticated plot that the government claims it was.

“Mr. Griffin recruited bank account holders through his public Instagram accounts, often showing his own face and identifying tattoos, and was ultimately identified because of those posts,” Elizabeth Faber, Griffin’s attorney, said in her sentencing memorandum. “A scheme built on public self-promotion under an identifiable persona is the opposite of sophisticated or complex.”

Griffin’s tattoos, which cover his body and face, include the Chase Bank logo in accurate bright blue and the letters WDC, which according to the prosecution stand for “Wipe Down Crew” — purportedly street slang for extracting every last dollar from a fraud such as Griffin’s stolen check scheme.

In his plea agreement, Griffin admitted that he participated in a conspiracy to steal checks — often for amounts in the tens of thousands of dollars — alter and deposit them in bank accounts of people he found through his Instagram posts. He and others quickly pulled the cash out of the accounts into which the altered checks had been deposited before the banks discovered the ruse.

The scheme netted about $2.8 million in proceeds, according to prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in LA.

In one case, a North Hollywood business reported that three checks totaling about $84,490 had gone missing in the mail. The names of the recipients on those checks were changed and they were deposited into JPMorgan Chase accounts of people unknown to the business owners.

Griffin and his accomplices took out the money through ATM withdrawals, Zelle and CashApp payments, a plane ticket purchase and card purchases at a San Bernardino County casino.

“Perhaps the most aggravating factor is that defendant recruited scores of individuals who were formerly not criminals into his scheme in order to shield himself from detection,” federal prosecution said in their recommendation for a sentence of 10 years and one month.

“It is very rare that a single person can turn dozens of previously legitimate citizens into criminals but defendant did so by glamorizing his scheme on social media and enticing the vulnerable with the promise of stacks of cash,” they added.

Moreover, the government pointed out, small business owners who had their checks to their suppliers stolen suffered a cascade of problems and were forced to borrow money at high interest rates to keep their business operating.

Griffin’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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