Information for Victims in Large Cases

In November 2020, EBlock Corporation (“EBlock”) acquired the assets of a California-based auto auction company and retained numerous of its employees. Unbeknownst to EBlock at the time of the asset acquisition, employees at the California-based auto auction company (“Company A”) had been engaged in a long-standing conspiracy with a used auto wholesale company to rig bids for used vehicles and to artificially increase prices paid by legitimate bidders by placing fake (“shill”) bids during online auctions. EBlock learned about the bid rigging and the deceitful bidding activity around January 21, 2021. EBlock rejected this conduct and took concrete steps to stop it, but Company A’s legacy employees continued the problem conduct. Although EBlock did not stop the conduct immediately, the conduct stopped because EBLOCK’s repeated efforts made it stop. More information is available in the Statement of Facts attached to the deferred prosecution agreement. The charged period began no later than November 2020 and continued until around February 2022. EBlock entered into a deferred prosecution agreement on January 22, 2026. A pretrial conference is scheduled on January 8, 2027.

Corporate defendants Bene Market LLC and Seguro Medico LLC, doing business as Quick Health, Q Health, Benefits Now, Express Benefits, and YourBenefits4U, are alleged to have engaged in a nationwide telemarketing fraud scheme directed by defendant Alan Redmond and his team of senior executives. The indictment charges the defendants with conspiracy and wire fraud related to their operation of a boiler room call center near Reading, PA, which peddled discount health and dental plans to consumers through a series of false, misleading, and deceptive sales practices. The indictment alleges that from at least January 2018 through December 2022, the defendants collected tens of millions of dollars in commissions by regularly and systematically deceiving and misleading consumers seeking health insurance through bait-and-switch sales tactics, which included tricking consumers into buying limited benefit plans that provided little or no coverage by falsely representing that the plans provided comprehensive health insurance coverage, also known as “major medical insurance,” or provided coverage equivalent to major medical insurance, when they did not.  

Familiar Names: Bene Market LLC & Seguro Medico LLC

Defendants Alexey Viktorovich Chertkov, Kirill Vladimirovich Morozov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shishkin, and Dmitriy Rubtsov have been charged with conspiring with others to maintain, operate, and profit from a botnet that was created by infecting older-model wireless internet routers worldwide, including in the United States, using malware without their owners’ knowledge. The installed malware allowed the routers to be reconfigured, granting unauthorized access to third parties and making the routers available for sale as proxy servers on the Anyproxy.net and 5socks.net websites.

Holman has been charged with stealing mail from USPS boxes in New Haven and West Haven during the time period of December 2022 through June 2023. The mail recovered by federal authorities included unaltered checks and money orders, none of which were cashed. Those checks and money orders remain in the custody of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Unless you want your check returned, it will be destroyed upon completion of the case.

In August 2016, defendant Ilya Lichtenstein hacked into a virtual currency exchange named Bitfinex and stole approximately 120,000 bitcoin. Following the theft, Defendant Lichtenstein devised a sophisticated plan to launder the stolen funds, involving extensive layering of transactions, cryptocurrency mixers and non-compliant cryptocurrency exchanges, darknet markets, and bank accounts in the U.S., as well as overseas. Defendant Lichtenstein enlisted the assistance of his wife, co-defendant Heather Rhiannon Morgan, to clean the money. Defendant Lichtenstein and Defendant Morgan continued to conspire to launder the funds until February 2022, when federal law enforcement placed them under arrest for being involved in a money laundering conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h), and a conspiracy to defraud the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. 

Defendants Schatt and Podulka along with co-defendant James Alexander (charged separately) engaged in a scheme to defraud crypto and fiat investors during a time when the business CRED INC was in fact entering bankruptcy. CRED INC solicited investments for "collateralized or guarantee lending."

Sioux Erosion Control, Inc., BG Dale Biscoe (part owner and Vice President), and Randall David Shelton (estimator) are charged with participating in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing prices and rigging bids for erosion control products and services, including solid slab sodding, in and around Oklahoma. The charged period begins at least as early as September 2017 and continues until as late as April 2023.

Juan Carlos Aponte Tolentino, formerly Interim President of a steel distributor in San Juan, Puerto Rico, knowingly entered into a conspiracy with competitors to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing wholesale prices for rebar distributed to hardware stores, contractors, and other businesses and individuals in Puerto Rico. The charged conspiracy began in January 2015 and continued until November 2022. Aponte pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge on August 7, 2024. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for November 8, 2024.

Charles Ferrell Trimm pleaded guilty to two counts of violating 15 U.S.C. § 1 for his role in a scheme to suppress and eliminate competition by rigging bids to obtain procurements for sports equipment and related services for schools in the Southern District of Mississippi and elsewhere. As part of these conspiracies, which began as early as August 2020 and continued until as late as February 2023, Trimm and his co-conspirators, among other things, (1) agreed in advance of some bids which co-conspirator would win the bid; (2) agreed to provide and submit complementary bids (that is, intentionally higher-priced bids) to schools; (3) requested and received complementary bids from co-conspirators, which they then submitted schools; and (4) received procurements for school sports equipment and related services where complementary bids were submitted.

Mr. Trimm also pleaded guilty to one count of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1349 for his role in a related scheme to commit wire fraud to obtain money from school sports procurements awarded by submitting false bids to schools in the Southern District of Mississippi and elsewhere. As part this conspiracy, which began as early as May 2016 and continued until as late as May 2023, Trimm and his co-conspirators, among other things, (1) submitted false bids on bidding forms that appeared to be from certain companies, though they were in fact not; (2) used a certain individual’s identity in furtherance of the fraudulent bid scheme, including by forging that individual’s signature on many of the false bids; (3) submitted and caused to be submitted false bids to schools in connection with requests from schools for bids for school sports equipment; and (4) subverted schools' procurement process in order to obtain payments by the submission of false, noncompetitive bids.

This case specifically involves the submission of fraudulent applications to receive funds from programs enacted to address needs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, from approximately February 2020 to May 2021. The defendants in this case filed fraudulent claims for unemployment benefits and business loans, including in the names of individuals who did not know of or consent to the submissions. In all, well over 800 individuals have been identified as victims in this case. Victims were identified by law enforcement via personally identifiable information (including names, dates of birth, and social security numbers) used by the defendants. Law enforcement then attempted to identify and locate the persons whose information was used. In total the defendants fraudulently obtained over $6 million from this scheme.

The indictment alleges that the defendant used social media and other forums to conduct a “pump and dump” scheme involving two cryptocurrencies, namely 1CRedit and Belacoin. Marx manipulated the price of, and trading in, 1CRedit and Belacoin cryptocurrencies using materially false statements, deceitful statements of half-truths, and the concealment of material facts in order to defraud investors and obtain illicit proceeds. As a result of this investigation, Marx is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and four counts of wire fraud.

The defendant was a seller on both Slilpp and Paysell (now called Blackpass) using the moniker “Mrtikov.” His overall involvement spanned from at least April 2016 through September 2019 and included listing for sale over 17 million economically valuable accounts of individuals held at various companies and banks. He actually sold over 14,000 sets of login credentials. The people who purchased those login credentials used those credentials to steal money from victim accounts.

Pakhtusov was indicted on 14 counts: Conspiracy to Commit Bank Fraud and Wire Fraud (Counts One and Two); Bank Fraud (Counts Three and Four); Wire Fraud (Count Five); Access Device Fraud (Count Six); Access Device Fraud (Counts Seven and Eight); and Aggravated Identity Theft (Counts Nine through Fourteen). Pakhtusov was extradited to the United States. On March 12, 2021, Pakhtusov pled guilty to one count of Access Device Fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1029(a)(3) [Count Eight of the Indictment] and three counts of Aggravated Identity Theft, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1028A [Counts Nine, Ten, and Eleven of the Indictment]. Pakhtusov is scheduled to be sentenced on September 13, 2023.