California – A California man has been sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison for orchestrating a scheme that involved forging over $1.2 million in money orders across California and Nevada.
Sterlyn Lee Smith Jr., 49, and numerous accomplices participated in the elaborate fraud, which spanned from July 2013 to February 2019. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada, the group purchased money orders at U.S. Post Offices, then fraudulently altered them to significantly higher values.
These altered money orders were then deposited into bank accounts opened under other people’s names at two banks in Nevada and California. Smith and his associates would then quickly withdraw cash before the banks discovered the forgeries. In total, they deposited or attempted to deposit more than 1,200 forged money orders, totaling over $1.2 million.
Smith pleaded guilty to two counts of bank fraud, one for each of the victimized banks. In addition to the 57-month prison sentence, he was ordered to pay $432,482.63 in restitution and will serve three years of supervised release upon his release.
