Jon Briceno, International Money Laundering, Maryland 2024

Baltimore, Maryland – Jon Briceno, age 42, of Katy, Texas, pleaded guilty on Friday, July 19, 2024, to conspiracy to commit money laundering, relating to his laundering of more than $8,751,523.07 in proceeds of various frauds, such as romance schemes and business email compromise schemes.

The guilty plea was announced by Erek L. Barron, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland; Special Agent in Charge Christina Bentham of the United States Secret Service (USSS), Baltimore Field Office; and Sheriff Matt Crisafulli of the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office.

According to the plea agreement, beginning around June 2020, at the latest, and continuing through the date of his arrest by federal law enforcement on February 20, 2024, Briceno entered into an illegal agreement with the individuals referred to as Person A and Person B in the Indictment and numerous other co-conspirators to conduct and attempt to conduct financial transactions affecting interstate and foreign commerce that constituted the fraud schemes.

The conspiracy involved the use of numerous shell companies formed by Briceno and his co-conspirators, as well as the opening of multiple bank accounts in the name of the shell companies that concealed his receipt and transfer of fraud proceeds. These shell companies assisted the conspiracy by allowing Briceno to receive and transfer fraud proceeds while concealing Briceno’s identity and that of his co-conspirators.

In connection with the scheme, Briceno and his co-conspirators each took a percentage of the proceeds from schemes, with Briceno often taking 10-25% of the fraud proceeds.

Briceno was an organizer or leader of the money laundering conspiracy, which involved multiple participants around the nation. Indeed, the Briceno routinely directed co-conspirators across the county in connection with the scheme, including by (1) recruiting them to open bank accounts in their names or in the names of various purported businesses (shell companies) to launder the fraud proceeds; (2) informing them when proceeds of schemes of defraud were deposited into bank accounts they controlled; (3) directing the co-conspirators regarding the intermediate accounts to which the proceeds were to be transferred; and (4) directing the co-conspirators to provide confirmation to him that the co-conspirators had in fact received and then transferred the proceeds as requested, including (a) photographs of online bank statements and online wire transfer confirmations; (b) mobile device screenshots of confirmations of transfers of funds via Zelle; and (c) mobile device screenshots of online bank statements.

Among the financial transactions Briceno directed with his co-conspirators was their receipt of funds from a victim, the Worcester County Treasurer’s Office in Worcester County, Maryland—referred to as Victim 1 in the Indictment—on 12 separate instances beginning on November 20, 2020 and ending on January 21, 2021 in amounts ranging in size from $16.60 to $41,471.94. In total, Worcester County was fraudulently convinced to provide $167,745.18 in funds to a bank account controlled by Briceno as a result of a business email compromise scheme in which an accounting manager employed by Worcester County received fraudulent emails directing that payments be made in response to a bill be made to the account controlled by Briceno.

Moreover, during the broader timeframe of June 2020 to February 20, 2024, Briceno and his co-conspirators, used numerous accounts opened by Briceno and co-conspirators throughout the United States to launder fraud proceeds obtained by numerous victims across the United States (including victims from California, Illinois, Virginia, Iowa, North Carolina, Texas, Missouri, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Indiana, South Carolina, Ohio, Alabama), as well as international victims Australia, Singapore, Luxembourg, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Thailand.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/texas-man-pleads-guilty-international-money-laundering-conspiracy-involving-more-8500000