MARYLAND NEWS

The FBI said three people got or tried to get investors to give them a total of more than $28 million, which the trio said would be invested in cryptocurrency and foreign exchange markets. Instead the three are accused of using the money for persoal expenses and to repay other investors. Source: WJZ-CBS Baltimore. The FBI is asking victims and others with knowledge of the "1st Million" investigation to contact the FBI. Source: FBI.gov

Rosly Wedington, 51, is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 8 after pleading guilty to tax fraud in 2019 for crimes related to a nonprofit job training center where former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh served on the board of directors, according to a sentencing memorandum...Prosecutors referred in their memo to Wedington as a “rare fraud recidivist,” noting she was convicted in 2004 for stealing $852,000 from a beloved Park Heights dentist while working as his secretary. Source: Baltimore Sun

The Attorney General’s office has been alerted to illegal, unlicensed pop-up COVID-19 testing sites operating in Baltimore City. Individuals are setting up “Free COVID-19 Testing” tables at random locations...Unauthorized pop-up testing sites could be a scheme for identity thieves to harvest sensitive, personal information from consumers….The Attorney General is encouraging consumers to visit covidtest.maryland.gov for a list of more than 240 approved COVID-19 testing sites in Maryland. Source: Maryland Attorney General

Used Similar Names, Trademarked Logos, and Graphics of Actual Companies to Create Fraudulent Websites to Obtain  Personal Information of Victims. Source: U.S. Attorney, District of Maryland

An 82-year old Annapolis former employee of the Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had job responsibilities that included pulling archival aerial photographs of Allied bombing runs in World War II, digitize them, and make them available to researchers. Starting in 2008, and without the knowledge or approval of the federal agency, the employee was hired and paid by a German company to do this very same work while he was employed at the federal agency. Source: U.S. Attorney, District of Maryland

Coalition of 38 Attorneys General Allege Google Illegally Maintained a Monopoly, Created Insurmountable Barriers to Entry for Competitors. The states allege that Google illegally maintains its monopoly over general search engines and related advertising markets through a series of anticompetitive exclusionary contracts and conduct. As a result, Google has deprived consumers of competition that could lead to more choice, innovation, and better privacy protections. Google has exploited its market position to accumulate and leverage data to the detriment of consumers. Source: Maryland Attorney General

The State of Maryland today announced that it has uncovered an unemployment insurance fraud scheme targeting high-ranking state government officials, including Governor Larry Hogan, Lt. Governor Boyd K. Rutherford, Labor Secretary Tiffany Robinson, and several other members of the governor’s cabinet. Source: Office of the Maryland Governor

A federal grand jury returned an indictment yesterday charging a Maryland lawyer in Maryland, on federal charges for wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering conspiracies, and three counts of wire fraud, one count of mail fraud, one count of bank fraud, and four counts of money laundering, in connection with his alleged participation in a scheme to defraud financial institutions of more than $12.5 million that was held on behalf of the Somali government. To effectuate this scheme, the lawyer and others allegedly created false documents regarding Schulman’s authority to recover assets on behalf of the Somali government, according to the DOJ. Source: US Attorney, District of Maryland.

A publication called Best Life ranked states based on examining Federal Trade Commission fraud reports and identity theft reports, FBI reports on cybercrime victims, and state integrity investigations from the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity. The results for Maryiand were 770 fraud reports per 100,000 people: 210 Identity theft reports per 100,000 people: and 194 cybercrime victims per 100,000 people, resulting in an Integrity grade of "D." Source: BestLife.com

Two owners of a Baltimore, MD, based cattle export business with farms in New Holland, and Spring Grove, PA, were charged with conspiring with a veterinarian to defraud the USDA and the buyers of their cattle in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada and Qatar by submitting more than a thousand false bovine blood samples to a Harrisburg laboratory for bovine disease testing between November 2016 and February 2020. Source:U.S. Attorney, Middle District of Pennsylvanian