HARRISBURG — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (USAO - Pennsylvania, Middle), published as received.

HARRISBURG - The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that that Evan R. Wechsler, age 46, and a resident of Bethesda, Maryland, was sentenced to 40 months in prison for bank fraud.

According to United States Attorney Gerard M. Karam, Wechsler was the leader of a check kiting scheme from 2016 to 2017. During this period of time, Wechsler wrote, signed, and deposited hundreds of worthless checks between accounts at different banks that he controlled. These accounts included personal accounts and business accounts in the names of affiliated companies that he ran.

Branch Banking & Trust (BB&T, now known as Truist) sustained a loss of nearly $6.3 million due to Wechsler’s fraud. During the check kiting scheme, Wechsler typically sent a large wire transfer each week from his BB&T account and also wrote checks from BB&T to an account at another bank. Then, over the course of a given week, Wechsler wrote numerous checks from that account to other accounts, including the one at BB&T. These worthless checks were then used to fund the outgoing transfers from BB&T at the beginning of the following week. Over time, the value of the fraudulent checks that Wechsler wrote continued to grow, from over $100,000 in early 2016 to nearly $700,000 in mid-2017.

In May 2017, Wechsler’s BB&T business checking account received over $118 million in fraudulent credits and had over $95 million in fraudulent debits. By conducting this scheme, Wechsler was able to inflate his businesses’ outward financial condition and receive what was, in effect, an interest free loan from the banks that he utilized for the check kiting scheme.

Wechsler was not ordered to pay restitution because he had paid BB&T back for the losses that it incurred prior to his sentencing hearing.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Ravi Romel Sharma prosecuted the case.

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