Man Sentenced to 57 Months Imprisonment for Defrauding Paychex and Other Payroll Companies of Almost One Million Dollars

ROCHESTER, NY—Wilberforce Francis Mensah, 31, formerly of Maryland, was senteced on March 28, 2009, to 57 months is prison and ordered to pay $970,000 in restitution by U.S. District Judge Charles J. Siragusa, Acting U.S. Attorney Kathleen M. Mehltretter of the Western District of New York announced today. The defendant had pled in guilty in July 2008 to wire fraud. The defendant is a citizen of Liberia and may be deported after his sentence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard A. Resnick, who handled the case, stated that from May 2001 to October 2004, the defendant executed a scheme to defraud various payroll companies, including Paychex, Inc., a payroll outsourcing company with headquarters in Rochester, New York. To defraud Paychex, the defendant set up fictitious companies and then deceived Paychex into advancing his companies funds representing payroll to be paid to the defendant’s companies’ fictitious employees. The funds would be advanced by Paychex to the defendant’s companies either by checks made payable to the defendant and his fictitious employees, or by funds directly deposited into the defendant’s bank accounts or other bank accounts he used as part of the scheme. During the scheme, the defendant opened up nine different fraudulent payroll accounts with Paychex. The total loss caused to Paychex was approximately $336,474.83.

In addition to defrauding Paychex, the defendant used similar schemes to defraud two other payroll processing companies, Ceridian Inc. and Computing Resources, a/k/a Intuit. Ceridian Inc. had six fraudulent payroll accounts opened by defendant and suffered a total loss of $341,000.00. Computing Resources, a/k/a Intuit, suffered a total loss of $292,370.11.

The conviction in this case was the culmination of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Laurie J. Bennett, Special Agent in Charge.