Workers Union, Business Email Compromise, Massachusetts 2023

The United States Attorney’s Office has announced that a workers union based in Dorchester, Massachusetts was defrauded out of $6.4 million in a business email compromise scheme targeting the organization.

According to the complaint, in January 2023, the workers union received a spoofed email that appeared to be from its investment manager. The email, which had the intended effect of misleading the workers union into transferring funds to a bank account controlled by someone other than the intended recipient, changed the beneficiary bank account of the $6.4 million payment.

After the workers union sent the payment, the fraudulently-obtained funds were transferred through a series of intermediary bank accounts, with some funds transferred, or attempted to be transferred, to a cryptocurrency exchange and to various bank accounts located in Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Nigeria.

Investigators traced proceeds of the scheme to seven domestically held bank accounts, the contents of which were subsequently seized. The United States Attorney’s Office has secured the forfeiture of approximately $5,315,746 of proceeds of the BEC scheme and property involved in the subsequent laundering of the proceeds.

This case is the result of a civil forfeiture complaint filed by the United States in June 2024 seeking the forfeiture of the funds. United States Attorney Leah B. Foley stated, ‘This case underscores the sophisticated and global nature of financial fraud schemes that prey on organizations and their hard-earned resources.’

The civil forfeiture action was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Lyons of the Office’s Asset Recovery Unit along with Trial Attorneys Jasmin Salehi Fashami and Adrienne Rosen of the Justice Department’s Money Laundering & Asset Recovery Section.

The announcement was made by United States Attorney Leah B. Foley; Deputy Assistant Attorney General Josh Goldfoot of the Criminal Division; and William Mancino, Special Agent in Charge of the United States Secret Service, Criminal Investigative Division, Washington Field Office.

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