Check fraud ring stole $7M from nine banks, credit unions

• Key insight: The indictment names all nine banks and credit unions where the money moved, which no prior account of this investigation has done.
• What's at stake: The failure here is not detection but what happens in the minutes after it, when a branch employee asks a question and the answer comes from someone the bank never speaks to.
• Forward look: Coaching is a method no issuance policy reaches, so ending paper Treasury checks does nothing about the part of this scheme that worked at the counter.

Overview bullets generated by AI with editorial review.

On a drizzly May day in Wellesley, Massachusetts, an M&T Bank employee called his fraud department about a U.S. Treasury check for $536,214.

The woman who had deposited the check nine days earlier stood in front of that employee. She came in about a hold the bank had placed on the check.

Another man, who was now seemingly waiting outside the branch, had accompanied the woman. He texted her. As she stood in the branch, she told him what was going on.

"Let him call," he wrote back, according to a federal indictment that quotes the exchange. "Everything is under your name. The most they'll say is they closing the account. And send you the check back."

That indictment, unsealed on Thursday in Boston, charges the man, Lindsley Georges, and three others with running a check-fraud ring through banks and credit unions in eastern and central Massachusetts.

Each of the four Massachusetts men — Georges, David Obeng, Lynley Joseph and Shaunsayh Addo — face one count of bank fraud conspiracy and one count of money laundering conspiracy.

Prosecutors alleged the group deposited, withdrew or tried to withdraw at least $12.2 million in stolen and altered Treasury checks between June 2023 and April 2026.

Actual losses in the case totaled $7 million, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in Boston, citing a court hearing Tuesday. The spokesperson did not say how much of that loss the banks and credit unions bore.

Authorities arrested all four on Thursday. Obeng and Georges pleaded not guilty at their initial appearance. Court records do not show pleas from Joseph or Addo, and the court has not recorded an attorney for either.

The Treasury Department stopped issuing paper checks for most federal payments last year, pursuant to an executive order. This addressed the problem of Treasury check forgeries, but the indictment contains a lesson about another method fraudsters use: Coaching.

The indictment names all nine institutions where the men moved their stolen money, and at some of them, it describes fraud controls working. Holds went on; a fraud department got a call; one bank emailed a customer asking for the tax return behind a refund check they tried to deposit.

None of it stopped the scheme, in part because the people the banks questioned got answers via text message from organized criminals who knew how to navigate the fraud controls --- alleged fraudsters who made no direct contact with the banks.

"He's calling the fraud department"

The $536,214 Treasury check was altered to name a company the depositor controlled and deposited into a business account at M&T's branch in Shrewsbury on May 7, 2024, according to the indictment.

The indictment does not name the woman Georges texted. It identifies her only as a co-conspirator and describes her as someone who opened accounts in the name of a company the group set up.

She texted him at 1:12 p.m. "He's calling the fraud department," she wrote, according to the indictment.

The bank employee asked her about the deposit before Georges wrote back. She said falsely that it was a tax refund for her company, according to the indictment.

A minute later, Georges sent the message of reassurance; just let the employee call the fraud department.

She sent back a photograph of the representative as he sat on the phone with the fraud department. She then recorded her conversation with the representative and sent it to Georges at 1:30 p.m.

She forwarded Georges an image of an M&T email at 2:33 p.m.; the bank had asked for a copy of the tax return that generated the refund. She asked Georges that evening what to write back.

"'I'll have my accountant send all my tax paperwork to me and then I'll forward it to you.' Say that," he wrote, according to the indictment.

The indictment does not say whether M&T released the money or returned the check; it does not track the outcome of any deposit it describes.

The timing, amount and circumstances of the deposit match one that a woman named Amarpreet Singh pleaded guilty last year to making. Singh admitted in September 2025 to bank fraud, money laundering conspiracy and theft of government money, in a separate case out of the same investigation.

Singh opened a business checking account for a roofing company in April 2024 and deposited a $536,214 Treasury check at a Shrewsbury bank the next month, according to the Justice Department announcement of her plea.

Singh is awaiting sentencing, according to the docket in her case. Her defense counsel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The same play, branch after branch

Altered Treasury checks were deposited into accounts at Berkshire Bank, Digital Credit Union, Northeast Community Bank, Rockland Trust, Sharon Credit Union and Tremont Credit Union, according to the indictment.

It names two more institutions in different roles; Bank of America and Hanscom Federal Credit Union are where the group opened accounts or moved the proceeds.

Two of the nine have changed hands since. Berkshire Bank is now part of Beacon Bank & Trust; Digital Credit Union is a division of First Tech Federal Credit Union.

The alleged fraudsters in the case did not rely on their checks going unnoticed. They relied on getting the cash out first — a well-trodden play that exploits the funds availability schedules federal regulators require banks to follow.

An altered check for $206,499.70 went into a Sharon Credit Union branch in Brockton at 5:03 p.m. on Feb. 2, 2024, and $5,525 came out in cash five minutes later, prosecutors alleged.

By 5:15 p.m., according to the indictment, Obeng had an image of the credit union's letter placing a hold on more than $200,000 of that deposit. The hold caught the check, but the unheld cash was already gone.

Rockland Trust took the largest deposit the indictment describes — an altered check for $2,088,528.40 at its Worcester branch in June 2024.

The bank also sent two wires totaling $310,300 from one of the accounts on its books (opened for a company that existed only on paper) to a jeweler in the Miami area, according to the indictment. The account holder told Rockland Trust employees both times that the purpose was "investment."

Obeng ordered $310,300 in Audemars Piguet watches and other jewelry that same week, prosecutors alleged.

Berkshire Bank left a voicemail asking the holder of one of the accounts to call. The group set about working out which device had been used to log into that account online, prosecutors alleged. The indictment does not say what the bank wanted to know.

An altered check for $1,355,863 went into that account at the bank's Leominster branch the next day.

A spokesperson for Beacon Bank & Trust said that the bank, as a matter of policy, does not comment on legal matters or litigation-related proceedings. A spokesperson for M&T Bank declined to comment for similar reasons.

None of the other financial institutions immediately responded to requests for comment.

Who the losses hit

The indictment allocates no loss to any bank or credit union, and no restitution figure is expected before sentencing.

Some of the money ended up beyond any bank's reach. A bank check for $425,000 drawn on the $1,355,863 Berkshire Bank deposit went to a law firm, and Addo loaned that money the next day to a borrower who did not know where it came from, prosecutors alleged.

Addo and another lender took the borrower's Nantucket property as collateral, and Addo collected interest on the loan for nearly two years, prosecutors alleged.