Being a Money Mule attracts prison sentence for US Woman
Photo by: Decade_null
Edna Fiedler from Washington was sentenced by US courts to a prison term for her role as a money mule in a Nigerian scam on US soil. In March, she had pleaded guilty to the charge. She admitted to actively assisting Nigerian fraudsters in carrying out a nationwide email scam.
Acted out from Lagos, Nigeria, the scam sought victims in US willing to cash in checks that are later revealed to them as forged. After depositing the check, victims are asked to take a generous portion of the amount as commission and to wire the rest back to the fraudsters. The scam would ask victims to send money directly to them or to people like Fiedler, their contacts in US. Only weeks after sending across the money do the bank get back to the victims revealing the check they deposited to be counterfeit. This leaves them scammed of the money they sent back to the fraudsters.
In Fiedler’s case, she was used by fraudsters in playing out the scam. They sent her names of prospective victims along with fake Wal-Mart money orders, US Postal Service Checks, Bank of America checks and American Express checks. She was then asked to fill out the checks and to send them to potential victims. From time to time, she was also required to send money made from the scam to the fraudsters.
Fiedler was found to have sent across fake documents seemingly worth $609,000 for the scammers. More documents presumably worth $1.1 million were found at the time of her arrest.
It is not unusual for people to unwittingly become a part of scams in this manner. They may not realize they are agreeing to take part in an illegal enterprise.
Edna Fiedler gets two years of prison term and five years of supervised release for all her troubles. The original fraudsters will remain unknown and at large.
Source: PCAdvisor.co.uk
Related posts:
June 27th, 2008 at 8:34 am
I am wondering if this is the same chick that sent me those fake checks…This girl used yahoo personals and put 3 or four or more fake names..Linda was one of them and she hustled people there and then..she’d say she was from scotland..uk..ireland..and then left an address in lagos nigeria…..some went as far as to leave a sob story that they were goonna give you alot of money..but then asked for 5000 or so to process the money..a bunch of crap…and when she talked to people on yahoo she would try and get there bank account info…not even interested in anything else..that was a clue to the scam
July 27th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Actually no she didnt use other names… she believed she was in love with a european man.. they totatally scammed her! She was talkign to him on phones.. he even sent her pictures of him self.. She thought he had a legitimate busines.. I love how everyone is so quick to judge when they know NOTHING about the situation.
Edna is my mother, and i know she wouldn’t try to do scam anyone.. she is just f*****g stupid! But hmm.. who is to blame why thousands of its citizens try and do shit like this.. because they are uneducated? Oh wait.. the government is in charge of that! Wow.. being uneducated leads to people being stupid.. really.. then it is not a big surprise when people try and make some money.. whether or not is was a felony that was commited.. she is only one of thousands taht will believe anything when it comes to money because they are poor and uneducated…. i hope you f*****g think about it!
July 29th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Edna knew EXACTLY what she was doing. I am the one who turned her into the Secret Service. You can read the story here:
http://thedailyworld.com/articles/2008/07/18/local_news/02news.prt
She was not simply a gullible woman who was wooed by some Internet boyfriend. She may be relatively uneducated, but she willfully commited this crime.
October 4th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
[...] Edna Fiedler from Washington was sentenced by US courts to a prison term for her role as a money mule in a Nigerian scam on US soil. [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Is there a way to recieve a review of this?