Massachusetts Man Pleads Guilty to Bank Fraud

CONCORD, NH—United States Attorney Tom Colantuono and Warren T. Bamford, the Special Agent in Charge of the Boston Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced that Sanford Meekins, a 62-year-old resident of Saugus, Massachusetts has pleaded guilty to bank fraud.

During a hearing in United States District Court earlier today, Meekins acknowledged that in December 2005, he allowed two stolen checks, totaling approximately $386,000, to be deposited to a bank account he opened for a company, Brown Printing International, LLC, at a branch office of TD BankNorth in New Hampshire. Knowing that the deposits were fraudulent, Meekins used the falsely inflated balance of the account to wire transfer approximately $364,000 to bank accounts in Switzerland and Hong Kong that belonged to other people with whom he had communicated by e-mail. Meekins also used approximately $9,400 from the proceeds of the stolen checks for his personal benefit.

Meekins is scheduled to be sentenced by United States District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro on April 22, 2009. The maximum penalty for bank fraud is a prison of term of 30 years. However, it is very unlikely that a sentence of that length will be imposed in this case.

After Meekins pleaded guilty, United States Attorney Colantuono said, “A number of people who claim to live in foreign countries use e-mail to convince people in the United States to allow checks to be deposited to their personal or business bank accounts. No one should allow their bank accounts to be used for that purpose by anyone with whom they have not conducted legitimate business, because the transactions that are being proposed are fraudulent and criminal.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Kinsella prosecuted this case.