An Ohio man was convicted yesterday after a two-day jury trial in the Western District of North Carolina for his role in a Costa Rican telemarketing scheme.
Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice
Department’s Criminal Division and Acting U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose
of the Western District of North Carolina made the announcement.
Paul Ronald Toth Jr., 40, of Wintersville, Ohio, was
convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and six counts
of international money-laundering concealment.
Sentencing before U.S. District Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr. of the
Western District of North Carolina will be scheduled at a later date.
According to the evidence presented at trial, Toth was
involved in a telemarketing scheme in which his co-conspirators contacted U.S.
residents from call centers in Costa Rica, falsely informing them that they had
won substantial cash prizes in “sweepstakes.”
To claim the cash prizes, the victims – many of whom were elderly – were
instructed to send a purported “refundable insurance fee.”
The trial evidence showed that, between approximately
November 2009 and November 2010, Toth was a United States-based “smasher” who
facilitated the laundering of funds received from the elderly victims. Specifically, according to the evidence
presented at trial, Toth and others he recruited and supervised received over
$300,000 from victims and, using various individuals as senders and recipients
to conceal the fraudulent nature of the transactions, wired over $200,000 of
those funds to co-conspirators in Costa Rica.
The evidence further demonstrated that Toth kept the remainder as his
profit.
This case is being investigated by the U.S. Postal
Inspection Service, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, Federal Trade
Commission and Department of Homeland Security.
The case is being prosecuted by Senior Litigation Counsel Patrick Donley
and Trial Attorneys William Bowne and Anna Kaminska of the Criminal Division’s
Fraud Section.
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