A West Los Angeles man pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping launder more than $378,000 obtained from victims of \u201cgrandparent\u201d scams who were defrauded with bogus claims that their relatives were in distress and in urgent need of funds.<\/p>\n
James Wesley Jackson III, 44, entered his plea in Los Angeles federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Sentencing was scheduled for Feb. 2.<\/p>\n
A two-count indictment also charges Christopher Fagon, 47, who at the time of the scheme lived in the Beverly Grove neighborhood of Los Angeles, and is now believed to reside in or near Toronto, Canada.<\/p>\n
Perpetrators of grandparent scams convince victims to send money \u2014 purportedly to help relatives, often their grandchildren, who are typically described as being in legal trouble \u2014 to bank accounts, business entities and physical addresses specified by the scammers for the supposed purpose of assisting the relatives.<\/p>\n
The victims\u2019 money often is initially handled by \u201cmoney mules,\u201d who allow their addresses or bank accounts to be used or agree to receive or negotiate cashier\u2019s checks. Prosecutors said Fagon was a manager of money mules such as Jackson, who also recruited his own money mules.<\/p>\n
Jackson\u2019s plea agreement states that once money was in accounts associated with the money mules or identity theft victims, he engaged in transactions designed to conceal the true nature of the funds, which had been obtained via wire fraud.<\/p>\n
The indictment says the scheme laundered funds obtained from victims of grandparent scams who live in California and as far away as Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
The charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering carries a possible penalty of up to 20 years in federal prison, prosecutors noted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A West Los Angeles man pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping launder more than $378,000 obtained from victims of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,110361,12651,2961,224,5337,103214,34445,23988,10890],"class_list":{"0":"post-216812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-grandparent","11":"tag-guilty","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-pleads","16":"tag-role","17":"tag-scams","18":"tag-west"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}