#POPEHAT TWITTER TROLLING SCAM SERIES#

Federal sentences are based in part on the recommended sentence calculated under the United States Sentencing Guidelines, as I've described here before. How much time will he get when he's sentenced? Hard to say. The part where he admits to the facts supporting the plea is on pages 9 – 13. In the second scheme - the one he tried on my firm - he sent out fraudulent solicitations designed to look like invoices for services rendered, even though he hadn't rendered services, hoping that companies would just pay without noticing that the solicitations were fraudulent. In one scheme, he scammed payroll companies: he pretended to hire them to handle payroll for his employees, gave them bank account information for accounts to back the payroll, and got them to issue pay to his employees from the payroll company's account, only to discover that Bell did not have the funds to repay the payroll companies. Significantly, that means he admitted to both schemes charged in the indictment. He pleaded guilty to counts three and five of the indictment against him. The minute order reflecting his guilty plea is here. This week, two years after his indictment, David Bell pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in violation of and one count of mail fraud in violation of. Most recently, in Chapter 14, I talked about how he had finally been indicted for federal crimes related to two different scams: the one he tried on my firm and one he tried on payroll firms. Popehat regulars are familiar with the 'Anatomy of a Scam' series, in which I used David Bell's fraudulent enterprise to illustrate how you can use the internet to investigate and expose scammers. This week he pleaded guilty to two federal felonies for the scam. The scammer - David Bell - called me and tried to con me. I sent his lawyer an email calling him out. Just shy of six years ago, in September 2011, a direct-mail scammer tried to scam my firm.

You can see the whole chapter index here.

#POPEHAT TWITTER TROLLING SCAM SERIES#

This series is about my investigation of a mail fraud ring that attempted to scam my firm, the history of its bad actors, and the methodology that I used to look into it.

Popehat twitter trolling scam