According to an announcement by Acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith, 64-year-old Alex Altoh has been sentenced to three years and ten months in prison for his role in a money laundering conspiracy. In addition to his jail time, Altoh is also required to pay restitution amounting to $1,478,068.99.
Further details surfaced from court documents cited by the U.S. Attorney's Office which stated that Altoh and his accomplice Oumar Sidibe, who is 31, participated in a scheme between January 2021 and November 2021 to launder money from two business email compromises, during this period they tricked two businesses into transferring payments to bank accounts they controlled, instead of the rightful recipients and proceeded to quickly withdraw amounts via checks as part of their efforts to cover up the illicit origins and to prevent the recovery of the funds.
An example provided highlighted how on October 26, 2021, an employee of a company fell prey to their plot and wired close to $3.5 million into Altoh's Wells Fargo bank account which he, within a timeframe of less than two hours, systematically withdrew by depositing checks in separate transactions across several Sacramento area bank branches with one check notably worth $248,000 deposited into his own Chase bank account; from this orchestrated maneuvering, Altoh was able to siphon off roughly $1.1 million, which ultimately went untraced and unreturned.
Altoh's co-defendant, Sidibe, has yet to be apprehended and faces his own set of accusations, though it is to be noted, as the U.S. Attorney's Office states, the charges are mere allegations at this point in time and he remains innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law. The completion of this case arrived as a result of diligent work by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with the prosecutorial efforts being led by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Denise N. Yasinow and Matthew Thuesen.
