Matthew Randall Ping, Wire Fraud, Washington 2025

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Ex-State Employee Faces Justice for $900,000 Heist

TACOMA – A brazen scheme to steal nearly $900,000 from his former employer has caught up to a 48-year-old Olympia resident, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud in U.S. District Court in Tacoma today.

Matthew Randall Ping, a former employee of the Washington State Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH), used a sophisticated scheme to embezzle at least $878,115 from the state agency between 2019 and 2023. As the department’s credit card custodian, Ping abused his access to embezzle funds, hiding the fraud from his employer.

Ping opened accounts with payment processors and gave the accounts display names that indicated the accounts were associated with legitimate OAH business vendors. He secretly charged more than $330,000 to OAH credit cards as purported payments to these vendors, but in reality, the money went to accounts Ping controlled.

In 2021, Ping set up an account via a different payment processor and continued the fraud, stealing approximately $530,000 in additional funds from OAH. He also used OAH credit cards to buy $17,359 in personal items from Verizon and Walmart.

The embezzlement was first discovered by the Washington State Auditor’s Office. Ping resigned his position in 2023 when the theft was discovered. Even as he was embezzling, Ping failed to report the stolen funds on his income tax returns, resulting in a tax loss of $240,247 for tax years 2020-2023.

Ping has agreed to pay full restitution to the state and to the IRS for his tax obligation. The FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) worked with the Auditor’s Office on the criminal investigation. Assistant United States Attorney Dane A. Westermeyer is prosecuting the case.

Ping is scheduled for sentencing by U.S. District Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright on September 9, 2025. The case is a stark reminder of the importance of oversight and accountability in public institutions.