A retired FBI agent has been sentenced to over seven years in prison after duping a Texas woman into believing she was on "secret probation" in a convoluted con that swindled her out of more than $700,000. The ex-agent, William Roy Stone Jr., 65, pulled off the elaborate scheme by convincing the victim that she was under watch for federal drug crimes and then milked her for hefty payments under the guise of supervisory services.
The ruse started when Stone and his accomplice, Joseph Eventino DeLeon, 64, told the victim known as C.T. that she was being monitored by a non-existent "Judge Anderson’s court in Austin, Texas." Over an eleven-month period, C.T. wrote multiple six-figure checks totaling in excess of $750,000 to the pair. Stone received the lion's share of over $700,000, while DeLeon pocketed more than $50,000, as stated by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In August 2023, a federal jury convicted Stone of several charges including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud itself, engaging in transactions with criminally derived property, and false impersonation of an officer. Meanwhile, DeLeon is set to face sentencing on March 5, 2024. The statement detailed the defendants’ extreme measures to keep the ruse alive, including phone surveillance, physical monitoring, and spoofed communications to make the probation appear legitimate.
Federal officials said the conniving duo went as far as urging C.T. to distance herself from her family and transferring assets out of a trust into an account in her own name. The pair even proposed a bizarre twist where the victim would marry Stone to end her "probation." During the trial, the Texas Rangers and the DOJ's Office of Inspector General, along with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jenna Rudoff, Donna Strittmatter Max, and Marcus Busch – and their executive team – built the case that led to Stone's sentencing by U.S. District Judge Ada Brown on Tuesday.
Public Affairs Officer Erin Dooley fielded inquiries about the case, underscoring the importance of the Bureau's role during the trial proceedings. The meticulous work by the prosecutors and the investigative team peeled back layers of deception to expose a scheme that preyed on the trust and vulnerability of an individual by someone entrusted to uphold the law.
