5 people charged in plot against veterans

Federal authorities have filed charges in San Antonio against five people as part of an effort to disband an international ring accused of stealing the personal information of thousands of military veterans or their dependents in order to access millions of dollars from their bank accounts.

Robert Wayne Boling Jr., 38; Fredrick Brown, 38; Trorice Crawford, 32 — all U.S. citizens; Australian citizen Allan Robert Kerr, 30; and South Korean citizen Jongmin Seok, 44; were arrested this week or in recent days in the Philippines or in the U.S. based on the indictment, which was handed up by a federal grand jury in San Antonio on July 23.

The 14-count indictment — which includes charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and aggravated identity theft — was unsealed Tuesday afternoon at San Antonio’s federal courthouse.

Among those institutions whose clients were affected were USAA and RandolphBrooks Federal Credit Union, according to the indictment. In some cases, the banks stopped transfers after deeming them unauthorized, the indictment said.

The Justice Department and U.S. Attorney John Bash, the top federal prosecutor in West Texas, are scheduled to announce details of the case at a press conference on Wednesday.

Boling, an American citizen arrested in the Philippines, is identified as the principal orchestrator of the international scheme, which allegedly used identifying information stolen from De

fense Department computers to transfer money, or divert it, out of the bank accounts of active U.S. military members, former prisoners of war and other veterans, their dependents and civilians employed by the Defense Department, according to the 24-page indictment.

The Pentagon had no immediate comment Tuesday afternoon.

The indictment said Brown, who was arrested in Las Vegas, was the primary source of the stolen personal information.

From December 2010 through September 2015, Brown worked as a civilian medical records technician at the U.S. Army’s 65th Medical Brigade in South Korea and had access to a substantial volume of military-affiliated individuals’ identifying information. He is suspected of taking screen shots of the information with his cellphone and transmitting it to Boling, the indictment said.

The defendants then used the stolen ID information to compromise the Defense Department’s self-service login account system, or DS Logon, which gives militaryaffiliated individuals access to more than 70 nonpublic websites using a single username and password.

That gave the defendants access to victims’ extensive personal and financial data, including dependents, tax information and health records. The DS Logon account could also alter the account and routing numbers into which salaries, benefits, disability payments and pensions were paid by the Defense Department or the Veterans Affairs Administration, the indictment said.

The breach is thought to have potentially compromised the information of more than 3,300 people, though not all had money stolen from their accounts. The indictment gives six examples of victims who had money stolen or diverted, and they include two Air Force colonels, a disabled 76-yearold Army major, two Navy petty officers and an Air Force master sergeant.

They are service-related disabled or retired and either live within the San Antonio-based Western District of Texas or banked at institutions within the federal district, like USAA and RBFCU. The six victims are only identified by initials. “While we can’t comment on a pending legal matter, USAA is cooperating with law enforcement,” USAA said in a statement. “We are committed to protecting our members’ personal and account information with multiple layers of security, and our team monitors accounts and fights fraud 24/7.”

The indictment said Boling, Kerr and Seok, who lived in the Philippines and are all in custody there, worked with a network of “money mules” who provided bank accounts into which stolen funds could be deposited. The “mules” tended to work from various locations within the United States, including San Antonio.

Each charge, except the aggravated identity theft count, carries a maximum of 20 years in prison. Aggravated ID theft is punishable by two years stacked on top of any sentence received for any of the other charges.

Federal authorities are seeking the extradition of those arrested in the Philippines while Brown and Crawford remained in federal custody.