The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Marco Raquan Honesty of Washington has pleaded guilty to his involvement in several fraudulent schemes, including COVID-19 relief scams, smishing attacks, and bank account takeovers, between 2021 and 2022 that have resulted in almost $622,000 in losses, reports SecurityWeek.
Aside from engaging in a fraud scheme against the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles via smishing victim data, Honesty and his co-conspirators also dabbled in bogus Paycheck Protection Program loan applications and fake tax returns from April to October 2021 that led the Small Business Administration to lose more than $500,000, court documents showed. Meanwhile, fraudulent Western Union transactions amounting to more than $79,000 have also been made by Honesty from December 2021 to January 2022, said the Justice Department, which noted that Honesty could be imprisoned for up to two decades for wire fraud and two years for aggravated identity theft once he is sentenced in May.
