A bank teller in Queens New York served as the inside man for a massive fraud ring that stole $50 million in fraudulent checks.
The Fraud Ring called the “Bag Hunters” which appears to be masterminded by two Nigerian International fraudsters attempted to steal close to $80 million from the government.
Shan Anand, a bank teller at a major bank, opened fraudulent accounts and added fake signers to existing accounts to helped the fraud ring deposit counterfeit or fraudulently obtained government checks into bank accounts and then withdrew the money before the fraud could be detected.
The scheme was reported by the DOJ this week.
The Bag Hunters Had Their Own Gear
The fraud ring wore branded clothing with their Bag Hunter logo while committing crimes. They are purchased on surveillance videos with hats as they deposited their counterfeit checks.
They specifically targeted the Employee Retention Credit and Qualified Sick Leave Wages credit established during the pandemic.
The ERC is a refundable tax credit for businesses and tax-exempt organizations that had employees during and were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The QSLW credit is a related credit that was also established in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the Bag Hunters did not have legitimate businesses, they could not qualify for the program so they needed to establish fake businesses and fake business bank accounts, and for that they turned to the Shan Anand to do the dirty work.
The Bank Teller That Facilitated It All
Anand was critical to the fraud rings operation because he enabled the fraud ring to use the bank as the conduit for the stolen funds and to establish fake businesses.
Anand didn’t just start working at the bank. He was a long-tenured employee who started working for the bank from 2014 until he left in 2024.
According to the indictment, it was until 2021 that his activities turned fraudulent. He would help the Bag Hunters open up new business accounts, or add additional users to existing business accounts so the checks could be deposited.
Anand Would Call The Hotline To Unfreeze Accounts
It didn’t stop at just opening accounts, Anand played an important role in unfreezeing accounts that the fraud department suspected were suspicious.
When the bank’s security systems flagged suspicious transactions, Anand would call the internal “fraud hotline” himself, falsely vouching for the legitimacy of transactions he knew were fraudulent and attempting to unfreeze accounts that had been locked for suspicious activity.
They Used The Fraud Bible
The indictment alleges the group attempted to steal approximately $80 million in total but succeeded in depositing about $50 million. The report also indicated that the group relied heavily on the “Fraud Bible”.
The group’s methods were outlined in what they called a “2021 Fraud Bible,” a document containing instructions for various types of financial crimes. Solomon Aluko, one of the defendants who used the online alias “D1 ReallyRich,” shared this guide with co-conspirator Nosakhare Nobore in November 2021.
“I typically just make a new one and photoshop the notice date and ein,” Nobore allegedly wrote to another defendant when discussing how to create fraudulent Employer Identification Number documents.”
The Bag Hunters also created a Telegram called ‘2021 Fraud Bible’ where they openly discussed their illegal dealings and provided others with a ‘format’ to defraud Americans, according to the indictment.
Read The Indictment
You can read the whole indictment here.
