A Unity man will spend three years in federal prison, lose his house, a 2018 Mercedes Benz, diamond jewelry, Tiffany earrings and other items after being sentenced last week for his part in defrauding more than a dozen cryptocurrency investors, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco said.
Anthony F. Faulk, 26, was ordered by U.S. Judge William H. Orrick in San Francisco on Thursday to forfeit close to $20 million in assets that the prosecutors said Faulk purchased with the money defrauded from the cryptocurrency investors. Faulk will forfeit his house at 1405 Farmview Court that he purchased in February 2018 for $942,500; three J.P. Morgan Chase accounts totaling about $18.8 million, two bank accounts each at Dollar Bank and BB&T bank, as well as a Cadillac and two other cars, a Rolex and a Louis Vuitton handbag and wallet, prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney in California had filed a document in Westmoreland County in December 2019, the month that he was indicted by a federal grand jury, listing the property it wanted to seize from Faulk.
Faulk pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a plea deal reached on March 2. A count of interstate communications with intent to extort was dropped, upon the government’s request.
Faulk was involved in the scheme from October 2016 to May 2018 that stole the victim’s cryptocurrency or digital assets by hacking into their email and accounts, prosecutors said. Faulk used the alias “shade” and conspired with Matthew Ditman and Ahmad Hared in duping cellphone service providers to transfer or port cellphone numbers from SIM cards into the victims’ phones to SIM cards in phones Faulk and his conspirators owned.
The conspirators reset passwords of their victims’ email, electronic storage, and other accounts. They then transferred cryptocurrencies from the victims’ accounts to accounts or wallets controlled by Faulk and his co-conspirators, prosecutors said. The indictment stated that Faulk and the co-conspirators phoned two of their victims and threatened to compromise further accounts unless they were paid more money.
The judge asked that the federal Bureau of Prisons place Faulk in a prison close to Western Pennsylvania, according to the court record.
Hared and Ditman were separately charged. Hared’s sentencing is set for Aug. 31 and Ditman’s sentencing is set for Oct. 12.
Joe Napsha is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Joe by email at jnapsha@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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