A 22-year-old Bronx man is headed to federal prison after prosecutors said he helped turn victims’ bank accounts into pipelines for cash withdrawals across Arizona, Colorado and California. Richard Modou Bah was sentenced last week to 58 months, closing the latest chapter in a scheme involving fake business accounts, stolen identities and withdrawals at banks and casinos.
Bah pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and was sentenced in Tucson to nearly five years in prison, followed by four years of supervised release, according to KTAR News. Prosecutors said the Bronx resident also recruited and supervised people who impersonated victims during the operation.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, Bah and his co-conspirators used victims’ personal identifying information and fraudulent identification documents to open phony business accounts connected to the victims’ legitimate accounts. The group then transferred money into those accounts before withdrawing the funds as cash at financial institutions and casinos.
Fake Accounts Turned Legitimate Bank Funds Into Cash
The mechanics of the scheme were built around impersonation, prosecutors said. People recruited by Bah allegedly posed as identity-theft victims while opening fraudulent accounts and making withdrawals, giving the operation a way to move stolen money through the banking system.
The case has already produced another federal prison sentence. Muhammed Drammeh, a 30-year-old Huntington Beach man who pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy, was sentenced in January to 37 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, according to KTAR News.
Arizona Prosecution Reaches Across Three States
The investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Tucson office, while the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Financial Crimes and Public Corruption Unit handled the prosecution, the federal agency said. The case illustrates how a crime centered on bank accounts in Arizona can quickly become a multi-state operation once stolen identities, fake documents and recruited impersonators enter the picture.
Bah’s sentence now includes both federal imprisonment and post-release supervision. Drammeh’s earlier sentence and Bah’s longer term reflect the separate punishments imposed on participants who admitted their roles in the bank-fraud conspiracy.
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