Man sentenced to federal prison in international bank fraud scheme
Federal officials said a member of an international criminal enterprise was sentenced this week in Las Vegas to more than three years in prison for his role in a bank fraud scheme.
Harold Sobel, 69, pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, court records show. As part of the guilty plea, Sobel admitted that more than $1.5 million in victim debits “were reasonably foreseeable to him,” according to an announcement Friday from the U.S. attorney’s office.
During a court hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon sentenced Sobel to three years, six months in prison and five years of supervised release.
Sobel, a U.S. citizen who previously resided in Ukraine, was accused of unlawfully debiting money from U.S. bank accounts. As a member of the criminal enterprise, Sobel opened bank accounts for shell companies in the U.S. at the direction of a co-conspirator, who organized the enterprise from outside the country, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
The criminal enterprise created shell companies and fake websites claiming to offer products or services such as cloud storage. The enterprise then executed unauthorized debits against victims’ bank accounts, while falsely telling banks that the debits were authorized by the victims, federal prosecutors said.
In one instance, Sobel opened four business deposit accounts for a shell company at a Las Vegas bank in October 2019. The criminal enterprise then funded “micro debits” through the shell company’s accounts that were designed to reduce scrutiny on the accounts. From December 2019 through January 2021, the shell company accounts funded more than 800,000 “micro debits” in amounts under $2, prosecutors said.
Sobel also was accused of recruiting at least two associates in the U.S. to help the foreign co-conspirator open more bank accounts and register shell companies.
He also helped support the criminal enterprise’s call center in Ukraine by creating scripts to respond to complaints from victims “to retain as much of the criminal enterprise’s proceeds as possible,” Friday’s announcement stated.
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.