FBI Arrests Suspect in Fraudulent Check Scam

The complaints started pouring into Aurora National Life Assurance Co. of Santa Monica a little more than a week ago.

Policyholders who had elected to pay their premiums through electronic bank transfers reported that they were being double-charged. And they had their bank statements to prove it.

After some sleuthing of their own, Aurora officials quickly realized that their customers were victims of a scam by someone inside the company.

The excess payments were going not to Aurora, however, but to another company named SSS Consultants Inc.

Whoever was perpetrating the fraud had obtained the policyholders’ bank account information and was turning out checks in their names.

Moreover, the culprit had cleverly altered coding numbers on the bogus checks to make it appear as if Aurora was getting the money.

Insurance company officials wasted no time in calling the FBI. Their prompt action paid off.

On Wednesday, FBI agents arrested a suspect, Anthony Johnson, 30, of Inglewood, and froze all of the more than $764,000 he allegedly skimmed from the Aurora policyholders’ bank accounts.

According to an affidavit by FBI Agent Keri Reiter, Johnson had access to Aurora’s computer records while working there as a temporary employee between late March and July of this year.

Although he was not authorized to download information about the policyholders’ bank accounts, that is what authorities suspect he did.

With that, they said, it was easy to generate checks drawn on the policyholders’ accounts. Reiter said the checks appeared to have been printed from the same computer.

There were no actual signatures on them, just a printed statement under each signature line, reading: “This check is pre-authorized by your depositor.”

More than 4,000 checks were deposited into a bank account Johnson allegedly established under a phony name with MBNA America of Wilmington, Del. They were in amounts that mimicked the policyholders’ regular payments to Aurora.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Pamela Johnston declined to say whether any other suspects were under investigation.

She praised the insurance company’s response. “They did all the right things,” she said.

Johnson was charged with bank fraud and with stealing the identity of one policyholder to set up a bank account into which the money was deposited. He is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail pending arraignment Sept. 13 in Los Angeles federal court. Bank fraud is punishable by a maximum of 30 years in prison. Misuse of another person’s identity, a new federal crime, carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.