Wakefield Woman Convicted of Money Laundering Conspiracy

BOSTON – A Wakefield woman was convicted of money laundering conspiracy on Nov. 24, 2025, following a six-day jury trial.

Christiane Fischer, 42, was convicted of one count of money laundering conspiracy. U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley scheduled sentencing for March 5, 2026. Fischer was indicted by a federal grand jury in November 2022.

Fischer owns PK Motor Cars, a used car dealership in Peabody that also repairs cars and rents used cars. In 2016, law enforcement began an investigation into a large-scale drug trafficker named Phillip Morose who sold hundreds of thousands of counterfeit fentanyl pills.

Evidence presented at trial established that Fischer conspired to launder Morose’s drug proceeds through her business, PK Motor Cars. In August 2016, Fischer added Morose as CEO of PK Motor Cars and thereafter Morose deposited nearly $1 million in cash into Fischer’s business bank accounts. At the end of 2016, Fischer used cashier’s checks from those same business bank accounts to buy Morose a house in Lynnfield. The house was purchased in the name of Fischer’s business in order to conceal the true ownership of the house and where the proceeds to buy the house came from. Fischer also allowed Morose to use luxury vehicles owned by her business to promote his drug trafficking.

In 2019, Morose was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking and money laundering in the Middle District of Florida. In March 2025, Morose was sentenced to 80 months in prison, to be served concurrently to the 2019 sentenced imposed, for money laundering in the District of Massachusetts.

The charge of money laundering conspiracy provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $500,000 or twice the amount of the laundered funds. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case.

United States Attorney Leah B. Foley; Jarod A. Forget, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in New England; Thomas Demeo, Special Agent in Charge of Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations in Boston; and Thomas Greco, Special Agent in Charge of the Boston Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives made the announcement. Valuable assistance was provided by the DEA Tampa District Office Task Force 1; Massachusetts State Police; and the Newton, Millis, Waltham, Framingham, Haverhill, Brookline, Natick, Wakefield, Burlington, Lynnfield and Peabody Police Departments. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Alathea E. Porter and K. Nathaniel Yeager of the Narcotics & Money Laundering Unit are prosecuting the case.

This case is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion. The HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders. In performing this work, the HSTF places special emphasis on investigating and prosecuting those engaged in child trafficking or other crimes involving children. The HSTF further utilizes all available tools to prosecute and remove the most violent criminal aliens from the United States. HSTF Boston is comprised of agents and officers from HSI, FBI, DEA, ATF, USMS, IRS-CI, USPIS, DOL-OIG and DSS, as well as several state and local law enforcement agencies, with the prosecution being led by the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.