Matthew Randall Ping, Wire Fraud and Tax Evasion, Washington 2025

A 48-year-old Olympia resident has been sentenced to prison for his role in a sophisticated scheme to embezzlement nearly $900,000 from his former employer, the State of Washington.

Tacoma, Washington - Matthew Randall Ping pleaded guilty in June 2025 to wire fraud and making and subscribing a false tax return. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his crimes.

Ping worked for the Washington State Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) from 2009 to 2023, during which time he was promoted to the role of Management Analyst and served as the department's credit card custodian. It was in this role that he used a sophisticated scheme to abuse his credit card access and embezzle at least $878,115 from the state agency.

Ping used a variety of methods to carry out his scheme, including opening accounts with payment processors and giving them display names that indicated they were associated with legitimate OAH business vendors. He then secretly charged more than $330,000 to OAH credit cards as purported payments to these vendors, when in fact the money went to accounts he controlled.

Between 2019 and 2021, Ping secretly executed 210 transactions with the phony vendors he created, resulting in a total loss to the state of $860,756. He also used OAH credit cards to buy $17,359 in personal items from Verizon and Walmart.

Ping also circumvented state procedures designed to detect credit card fraud by providing false or incomplete lists of transactions during the review process, and then uploading and approving payment himself without the required oversight on his fraudulent transactions.

Assistant United States Attorney Dane Westermeyer noted that much of the money Ping stole was gambled away at casinos, which resulted in a tax loss of nearly $250,000. Ping will be on three years of supervised release following his prison term. Judge Cartwright urged him to be active advocating for services and regulations that would benefit those struggling with a gambling addiction.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/former-washington-state-employee-sentenced-prison-embezzling-nearly-900000