Brazilian Man Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison For Defrauding Manhattan Financial Institutions And

Brazilian Man Sentenced To 3 ½ Years In Prison For Defrauding Manhattan Financial Institutions And Aggravated Identity Theft


Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that MARCOS ELIAS, a Brazilian citizen and resident, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for participating in a scheme to fraudulently obtain more than $750,000 at financial institutions headquartered in Manhattan using false representations and the stolen identities of Brazilian account holders at those institutions. U.S. District Judge Gregory H. Woods imposed today’s sentence.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said: “Using a stolen identity and bogus documents, Marcos Elias conned his friend’s company to transfer more than $750,000 to an account in the name of a fake company that he controlled. Instead of living off of his ill-gotten gains, he will now spend the next three-and-a-half years in prison for his crimes.”

According to the Complaint, Indictment, and statements made in court proceedings:

Since 2012, a Brazilian company (the “Client”) held an account at a financial institution headquartered in Manhattan (the “Firm”). Beginning in June 2014, cooperating witness Evandro Dos Reis Jr. (“Dos Reis”), who was then a Senior Vice President at the Firm, communicated with ELIAS, a longtime friend, regarding the Client’s account. Shortly thereafter, Dos Reis began receiving emails to his Firm email account purportedly from an employee of the Client (the “Client Employee”) instructing Dos Reis to transfer the Client’s money to a bank account in Luxembourg (the “Luxembourg Account”) that appeared to be in the name of the Client. Those emails were sent from an email address that was never used by the Client Employee and contained bogus wire instructions with the forged signature of the Client Employee. On July 15, 2014, as a result of the false documentation provided to Dos Reis which he forwarded to another Firm employee to be executed, the Firm transferred approximately $752,000 from the Client’s account at the Firm to the Luxembourg Account (the “Fraudulent Transfer”), believing it to be a legitimate transfer requested by the Client.

Read more: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/brazilian-man-sentenced-3-years-prison-defrauding-manhattan-financial-institutions-and