WHO’S CRYING NOW?
RI man charged in $35M romance fraud case
The feds have named a Rhode Island man they say operated as a “money mule” for foreign-based romance and elder scams that laundered $35 million in ill-gotten gains.
“We are already ‘money mules’ complicit in their offenses,” Craig Clayton, the Rhode Island man charged with putting his financial skills toward massive fraud, allegedly wrote to his Ukrainebased co-conspirator in a March 2020 email, according to a court affidavit. “It just opens us up to charges.”
Clayton, 73, of Cranston, R.I., operated Rochart Consulting, a “virtual CFO” operation that provided financial services for start-ups and fintech operations, out of his home.
He was arrested and appeared in federal court in Boston Thursday.
He pleaded not guilty before Chief U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge M. Page Kelley to charges of operating an extensive money laundering scheme in which he created around 80 different bank accounts — mainly in Massachusetts and Rhode Island banks — for 65 different “shell” companies
whose sole purpose was to launder tens of millions of dollars foreign operatives squeezed out of U.S. victims, according to an affidavit.
Clayton was released after he posted a $100,000 unsecured bond.
His business website, which carries the slogan “Think Straight, Talk Straight,” is a one-page resume for potential clients, in which he as a virtual chief financial officer would be “a business partner. An experienced finance and qualified accounting professional providing a comprehensive service.”
The site, which lists him as the owner in the source code, states that he has 20
years of experience as a CFO in the U.S., Australia and in Southeast Asia who specializes in startups in the software, ecommerce, sustainable and renewables technology and financial technology fields.
It says he’s a former chartered accountant for Arthur Andersen, the Chicago accounting firm that went belly-up when its questionable accounting practices were exposed in the Enron scandal of 2002.
“I know that online fraud schemes, including romance scams and elder fraud, are often committed by perpetrators outside the United States,” wrote Special Agent Lori Robinson, an investigator
for the Department of Homeland Security, in her affidavit supporting the charges. “These schemes, however, frequently involve the use of the United States banking system and of conspirators in the United States to launder and/or access the fraud proceeds.”
The Herald last year told the tale of Cindy Tsai, one victim of a similar socalled “romance scam.” In the lowest point of her life — having been diagnosed with stomach cancer and having her husband leave her — met “Jimmy” online and thought she had found a friend who cared. Instead, she ended up losing $2.5 million in the scam.
Robinson, in her 61page, extremely detailed affidavit, said that Clayton operated as a “straw man” who created bank accounts that scammers would direct their victims — who all have similar stories to Tsai — to deposit their money into.
These accounts would be attached to fake companies like “Providence Sanitizer Inc.” or “Sustainable Agriculture Technology Inc.” established all over the place, from Delaware to Wyoming, that had no real business operation nor any real owners listed, just a “manager” named Craig Clayton.
As Craig allegedly described it to an undercover agent, ““we incorporate
a company, set-up a bank account, … and the money starts rolling.”