Evan R. Wechsler, 46, and a resident of Bethesda, Maryland, was sentenced to 40 months in prison for bank fraud.
According to United States Attorney Gerard M. Karam, Wechsler led a check-kiting scheme from 2016 to 2017.
During this period, Wechsler wrote, signed, and deposited hundreds of worthless checks between accounts at different banks he controlled.
These accounts included personal and business accounts in the names of affiliated companies he ran.
Branch Banking & Trust (BB&T, now known as Truist) lost nearly $6.3 million due to Wechsler’s fraud.
During the check-kiting scheme, Wechsler typically sent a large wire transfer each week from his BB&T account and also wrote checks from BB&T to an account at another bank.
Then, over the course of a given week, Wechsler wrote numerous checks from that account to other accounts, including the one at BB&T.
These worthless checks were then used to fund the outgoing transfers from BB&T at the beginning of the following week.
Over time, the value of the fraudulent checks that Wechsler wrote grew from over $100,000 in early 2016 to nearly $700,000 in mid-2017.
In May 2017, Wechsler’s BB&T business checking account received over $118 million in fraudulent credits and had over $95 million in fraudulent debits.
By conducting this scheme, Wechsler was able to inflate his businesses’ outward financial condition and receive what was, in effect, an interest-free loan from the banks that he utilised for the check-kiting scheme.
Wechsler was not ordered to pay restitution because he had paid BB&T back for the losses it incurred before his sentencing hearing.
