Scammer Sentenced For Stealing $9M From Adoption, Automotive Firms
A Florida man was sentenced to 37 months in prison earlier this week for his involvement in a business account takeover scheme that resulted in more than $9 million in total financial losses.
Business account takeover (also known as corporate account takeover) is a type of fraud or business identity theft where scammers gain access to a business’ finances to fraudulently change its bank accounts to ones under their control to make unauthorized transactions.
52-year old Igor Buzyukov of Weston, Florida, was charged with one count of money laundering in February 2019 and he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in December 2019.
Besides the prison term, Buzyukov was also sentenced to pay $160,000 as restitution for his illegal proceeds from the scheme and to three years of supervised release.
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Fraudulent bank account change requests via phone
Buzyukov was involved in the business account takeover scheme that involved siphoning e-commerce customer payments from the clients of a financial tech firm headquartered in San Jose, California, between February 2018 and July 2018.
The companies who were scammed out of more than $9 million were a provider of adoption services headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, and an online retailer of automotive parts and accessories from Cranbury, New Jersey, according to court documents [PDF].
A bank account controlled by Buzyukov was used to transfer funds from the accounts of the victim companies, after being added by an account manager to their records at the financial tech company following a bank account change request in a fraudulent phone call made by an unknown individual.
“The unauthorized bank accounts added to the victims’ Company-1 accounts were each controlled by Buzyukov under the name of a corporation registered to him in the State of Florida,” a Department of Justice press release explains.
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Artwork sells used as a cover for illegal funds
Buzyukov and his wife, who controlled a Florida corporation named Vigor Green LLC, also scammed the financial tech firm and some of its clients out of almost $100,000.
“After monies were deposited to the unauthorized accounts, Buzyukov would transfer the funds to other accounts controlled by him,” the DoJ presser adds.
“Buzyukov then wired the majority of the funds to several bank accounts held by various individuals in Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.”
To make these transactions appear legitimate, he also generated fake invoices in the amounts of the fraudulent wire transfers.
When U.S. Secret Service agents asked Buzyukov about the money transferred to the accounts he admitted to controlling, Buzyukov “claimed that the payments were related to artwork he sold” to the automotive parts retailer.
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