Associated Press
Cybercrime investigators searched a South Carolina home in a nationwide effort to track down suspects they say stole more than $206,000 from a Florida school board.
Federal agents this week searched the Greenville home of a man who has been indicted in the scheme to defraud the Sumter County School Board in Bushnell, Florida.
The FBI has arrested two other suspects at their homes in Detroit and Puyallup, Washington.
Prosecutors say the crew used a website to trick a school board financial administrator who was trying to log in to the board’s accounts with Alabama-based Regions Bank. The screen said the website was temporarily unavailable, and redirected to an alternate site.
The “alternative website is indicative of a technique used by hostile cyber actors to access victim bank accounts,” FBI Special Agent Dustin Reid wrote in an affidavit.
The scheme enabled the suspects to obtain five Regions Bank credit cards that were mailed to addresses in Michigan, California and South Carolina.
The suspects then went on a major shopping spree last year, spending more than $206,000 at Best Buy, Target, Apple stores and others. One of the suspects was known on Facebook as “Sellitall Gotitall,” the affidavit states.
The FBI in November arrested Kenbee Omari Hughey in Detroit; and Dejon Romans Brown in Puyallup, Washington. Hughey’s lawyer didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment. No lawyer for Brown is listed in court records.
The South Carolina man whose home was searched Wednesday, Josten Rakeem-Hassan Brown, was arrested this week. His lawyer on Thursday declined comment on the specifics of the case, but said a court hearing for Brown has been set for Friday in Greenville.
