Keys man gets prison for laundering nearly $1M from scam. ‘Lonely older women’ were victims
A federal judge on Monday gave a 15-year prison sentence to a Key West man convicted of laundering nearly $1 million that others swindled out of people they befriended online.
Sean Kerwin Bindranauth, 45, collected the funds that came from promises of romance or investment opportunities and sent it from the U.S. to Nigeria, a jury found after a three-day trial last fall.
Victims included more than a dozen elderly people — “generally lonely older women” — who were contacted on social media and eventually persuaded to send money, prosecutors said.
The co-conspirators, who were not named, posed as men living on oil rigs, serving in the military, or working in remote locations. They struck up online relationships with strangers to pull off the fraud.
Other victims were fooled into investment scams. One testified at trial that he was misled into believing that sinking $1,000 into cryptocurrency would pay off at $10,000.
People scammed in 2018 and 2019 were instructed to send cash and personal checks or make wire transfers to Bindranauth, who received a percentage of the $900,000 the scheme raised.
“A forensic analyst testified that the total loss to victims was impossible to ascertain because of untraceable funds,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida said in a press release.
U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore sentenced Bindranauth, who on Sept. 30, 2021 was found guilty of conspiring to commit money laundering, six counts of substantive money laundering, and conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business.
Bindranauth’s 15-year prison term will be followed by three years of supervised release.
He had faced up to 20 years for the money laundering conspiracy, 20 years for each money laundering count, and five years for unlicensed money transmitting.
Bindranauth was arrested Sept. 27, 2019, days after a grand jury indictment accused him of money laundering.
‘A flight risk’
Once Bindranauth received the money, he sent it to Nigeria through several channels, including international money transfer companies like Western Union and MoneyGram, and bank transfers.
Some people mailed cash, which he would use to buy gift cards and relay the information to his co-conspirators in Nigeria.
The gift card part of the scheme was what made it impossible to trace all of the victims’ losses, prosecutors said.
Bindranauth used Western Union and banks until they blocked him and found “mules” to make the transfers, according to court filings. In Facebook messenger chats, he discussed how to get around law enforcement and bank investigators.
Homeland Security in Miami investigated the case with help from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Bindranauth, who worked construction, was born in Guyana but has been in the U.S. for most of his life, according to his detention order deeming him a flight risk signed by a magistrate judge in October 2019.
He was locked up until his trial.
Bindranauth has a criminal history in Monroe County. In January 2018, he pleaded no contest to two counts of felony marijuana possession, for having more than 20 grams, and a judge sentenced him to two years of drug-offender probation.
%20Cropped%20(1).jpg)