Man Gets 5+ Years Prison For Boston, Dominican SEC Email Scam

BOSTON, MA – A Dominican national was sentenced this week in federal court in Boston in connection with his role in a conspiracy that defrauded people by pretending to be employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and having them send money from Boston to the Dominican Republic.

Leonel Alexis Valerio Santana, 28, was sentenced to 63 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay restitution of $105,869. Valerio Santana pleaded guilty in May to two conspiracies: a conspiracy to commit money laundering, and a separate conspiracy to commit wire fraud, to impersonate a federal employee, and to misuse a government seal.

In January, Valerio Santana was arrested and charged by criminal complaint along with co-conspirator Frank Gregory Cedeno, 27, of Ocoee, Florida. Cedeno was indicted in March and pleaded not guilty.

For about two years beginning around June 2015, Valerio Santana conspired with others to defraud victims by pretending to be employees of the SEC. In that guise, members of the conspiracy demanded money from victims and directed them to send it to members of the conspiracy, including members in Boston.

The conspirators who received the money generally withdrew it from bank accounts quickly, then forwarded much of it to individuals in the Dominican Republic, including to Valerio Santana.

In one common version of the scam, victims received e-mails that used official-seeming documentation with the SEC seal to support a false claim that the victim must pay a fee in order to receive a portion of a legal settlement. In another version of the scheme, victims received e-mails and official-seeming documents labeling the victim as a defendant in a civil lawsuit alleging that the victim owed tens of thousands of dollars in supposed disgorgement, penalties and fees.

The documents gave the victim a choice of either appearing in court to contest the lawsuit or paying a smaller fee. The e-mails in this scheme came from e-mail addresses designed to look official, addresses including, for example, ussec@nusecc.net and nussec@usa.com.

Valerio Santana was responsible for recruiting people who received money transfers from victims and then forwarded the money to conspirators in the Dominican Republic, including, at times, to Valerio Santana himself. Valerio Santana recruited several of these money couriers, primarily in the Boston area.

During the course of Valerio Santana’s participation in the scheme, the couriers he recruited received $105,869 in victim funds; however, the total solicitations from those victims were even greater, reaching approximately $283,874 in intended loss.

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