Tampa, Florida - U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday today sentenced Priscilla Ann Ellis (52, Killeen, Texas) to 40 years in federal prison for conspiracy to commit international money laundering and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. As part of her sentence, the Court entered a money judgment in the amount of $9,288,241.36, and ordered the forfeiture of various assets, including Ellis’s bank accounts, properties, and a luxury vehicle. The Court also ordered Ellis to pay restitution to the victims of the offenses in the amount of $3,767,196.
A federal jury found Ellis guilty on Oct. 21, 2016.
According to evidence presented at trial, Ellis, her attorney, Perry Don Cortese, and her daughter, Kenietta Rayshawn Johnson, were members of an international criminal organization that defrauded dozens of victims across the United States and then laundered the funds, much of which were sent overseas. The fraud schemes took several forms. Many victims were law firms solicited online to perform legal work, provided counterfeit cashier’s checks for deposit into the firms’ trust accounts, and then directed to wire money to third-party shell businesses controlled by the conspirators. Others were title companies defrauded in phony real estate transactions. Other victims were targeted and defrauded by fake suitors on dating websites. The conspiracy also employed hackers who compromised both individual and corporate e-mail accounts, ordering wire transfers from brokerage and business accounts to shell accounts controlled by conspirators.
Victims were instructed to wire money into funnel accounts held by conspirators, known as “money mules." The funds were then quickly moved to other accounts in the United States and around the world before the victims could discover the fraud. Bank records presented at trial indicate that, from 2012 to 2015, several millions dollars’ worth of wires were received in such accounts to be laundered. Conspirators in Canada, Nigeria, South Korea, Senegal, and elsewhere helped coordinate the fraud and money laundering activity from abroad.
Ellis laundered several million dollars’ worth of fraud proceeds through her bank accounts and other accounts under her control. She also arranged for the creation of high-quality forgeries of checks and other documents. Cortese, a licensed attorney in Texas, worked for the conspirators by laundering victim money through his interest on lawyers trust accounts (“IOLTAs"). He also met with individuals in person to retrieve cash withdrawn from receiver accounts. Cortese recruited his paralegal and others to open such accounts to launder funds. The evidence further showed that Johnson, then a bank employee at Capital One, helped create counterfeit checks and monitor money flows between accounts controlled by conspirators.
On Nov. 29, 2017, Ellis is scheduled to be sentenced in a related matter, in which a jury found her guilty of conspiracy to commit counterfeiting, using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, and retaliating against a witness.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with assistance from various federal and local law enforcement partners throughout the country, including the United States Postal Inspection Service, and the Toronto Police Service in Ontario, Canada. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Patrick Scruggs and Eric Gerard.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
