[RootRXXT]

A 59-year-old man from Irvine, California, was sentenced to 87 months in prison for his involvement in an investor fraud ring that stole $50 million between 2012 and October 2020.

Allen Giltman and other fraudsters used over 150 fraudulent sites impersonating financial institutions that advertised various investment opportunities (primarily certificates of deposit with higher than average rates of return to lure victims in) and solicited money from investors.

These investment scam websites were promoted via Google and Microsoft Bing ads, targeting phrases like "best CD rates" or "highest cd rates."

According to court documents, the scammers impersonated Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) broker-dealers, claiming to be employed by the financial institutions they spoofed on the scam sites. This allowed them to trick over 70 victims who sought investment opportunities into wiring roughly $50 million.

"After discovering one of the fraudulent websites, victims would contact an individual via telephone or email as directed on the sites. As alleged in the Information, this individual was Giltman. During his communications with victims of the fraud scheme, Giltman impersonated real FINRA broker-dealers by using their names and FINRA CRD numbers," the U.S. Justice Department said in a Tuesday press release.

"Giltman would then provide the victims with applications and wiring instructions for the purchase of a CD. The funds wired by the victims would then be moved to various domestic and international bank accounts, including accounts in Russia, the Republic of Georgia, Hong Kong, and Turkey. None of the victims received a CD after wiring the funds."

Throughout the scheme, Giltman and his co-conspirators used various tactics to hide their true identities, including virtual private networks (VPNs), prepaid phone and encrypted apps to communicate with their targets, prepaid gift cards to register web domains, and fake invoices to explain the large wire transfers they received from their victims.

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So he used bank accounts in his name to receive the payments and then for the rest of the operation used VPN and prepaid gift cards. lol

[Omniscient]

So he used bank accounts in his name to receive the payments and then for the rest of the operation used VPN and prepaid gift cards. lol

The banks themselves are in jurisdictions which likely won't extradite.

[Hackers]

The banks themselves are in jurisdictions which likely won't extradite.

Yeah most likely true, but still super risky of this guy to put everything in his name while living in California.
Even if they don't extradite, all it takes is just 1 bank being willing to provide his info to the feds