Feds Charge Romanian with Fraud in Bogus Online Auto Sales

The suspect could be in Romania, but that did not end a federal grand jury in San Jose from indicting a Romanian citizen on a few counts of financial institution fraud in a plan to defraud people with phony on the web auto auction adverts, authorities introduced Thursday.

U.S. Lawyer Stephanie M. Hinds and FBI Particular Agent in Demand Sean Ragan, in a joint press launch, mentioned Ionut Ganea, 28, though living in Romania, conspired to defraud buyers of nearly $2 million in 2019-2020 by posting fraudulent automobile auction adverts on a number of vehicle websites.

They reported Ganea continues to be at huge, and the investigation is continuing.

The online automobile auction commercials contained information and facts usual of respectable auctions, together with photos of the cars for sale.  The indictment alleges, even so, that the vehicles marketed for sale ended up not owned by the purported sellers.  The purported sellers thereafter communicated with fascinated potential buyers by means of on the net messaging platforms and induced them to put bids on the auctions, according to the indictment.

Following a sufferer-purchaser “won” an auction and wired payment to the seller’s financial institution account as instructed, the motor vehicle was never delivered.

The indictment alleges Ganea acted as a “money mule” in the plan, amassing the illegally acquired money and sending it to the other members in the fraud.  Ganea applied phony identities to established up bank accounts in the United States with respectable banking establishments.  The financial institution accounts were applied to receive the wire transfers of resources from the target-potential buyers in the fraudulent auctions. Ganea then allegedly withdrew the resources from the accounts, prosecutors mentioned.

The indictment alleges that involving December 2019 and September 2020, Ganea opened at minimum 74 lender accounts in eight banks across the U.S. though using 28 pretend names and fraudulent passports from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Latvia.  In accordance to the indictment, 117 individual target-potential buyers wired just about $2 million pounds to these accounts, and Ganea withdrew far more than $1.8 million of all those money.

The federal indictment charges Ganea with three counts of financial institution fraud. The maximum statutory sentence for every single violation is 30 decades in prison, a high-quality up to $1 million or two times the gross achieve or reduction quantity and 5 many years of supervised release just after prison.