Leslie Redd III, Email Fraud, Washington 2024

A California man, Leslie Redd III, has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for his part in a brazen email fraud scheme that swindled over $3.3 million from two boatbuilding companies in Washington state.

Redd, 47, of Inglewood, California, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington. The scheme, which involved a co-conspirator in Pennsylvania and others, targeted employees of the engine-building company and the boat-building company.

According to court records, the scheme began in October 2018 when a malicious link was sent to an employee’s email address at the engine-building company. The link allowed the conspirators to gain access to the company’s email system and review various emails, including those transmitting invoices.

The conspirators then posed as a billing executive at the engine manufacturing company and sent the boat-building company instructions to wire the payment funds to a specific bank account. The conspirators had set up a fake company and the account at a Pennsylvania bank specifically to receive these funds.

On October 29, 2018, the boat builder paid the invoice for $3,316,730 by wiring the funds as directed by the fraudulent emails. The co-conspirator in Pennsylvania quickly forwarded $3,074,500 to bank accounts controlled by Redd and other co-conspirators.

Redd kept $857,350 in accounts he controlled, but investigators were able to seize $420,817 from those accounts. Prosecutors also revealed that Redd forwarded more than $2,000,000 of the stolen money to China to other co-conspirators, whom he did not even know.

Redd will be on three years of supervised release following his 16-month prison sentence. He was ordered to pay $2,802,368.24 in restitution, which represents the amount of the outstanding loss.

The case was investigated by the FBI Seattle Office Cyber Task Force and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Andrew Friedman and former Assistant United States Attorney Siddharth Velamoor.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez expressed particular concern that American citizens would help foreign criminals defraud fellow Americans.

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