A 42-year-old American wanted by the United States justice system for an alleged millionaire fraud of nearly $36 million, sought Costa Rica as his destination to flee from the authorities. However, he did not achieve his goal.
Paul McDaniel, who called himself Edward Martin Karuku and resided in Orange County (California), committed the crimes and fled in early 2017.
During that year, the investigations allowed authorities to find him in Costa Rican territory, but he was extradited last Thursday, February 14th. All this time, McDaniel was under arrest by immigration authorities.
The man, transferred to Los Angeles, is charged with 10 counts of bank fraud and is subject to a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
Why is he a suspect? Between July 2009 and December 2016, the subject apparently embezzled millionaire funds belonging to a company called Hypermedia Systems Inc. A technology services company based in Los Angeles. His role as accounting manager of that company allowed him to devise a scheme to -presumably- commit fraud.
McDaniel was assigned to work at Hypermedia as an accounting manager for E-Times Corp. As part of his job, he would request that payments be made from a Hypermedia account to pay the alleged suppliers. According to the indictment filed in September 2017, during the time he was working with Hypermedia, he formed a corporation in the state of Nevada with a name similar to one of the company’s suppliers and then opened a bank account on behalf of that entity.
Then, he allegedly used his authority as Hypermedia’s accounting manager to approve and direct payments for more than $36 million to this bank account. To justify the payments, he allegedly created false and fictitious invoices on the letterhead of the actual Hypermedia suppliers, falsely claiming that specific products had been provided to the company. The fraudulent payments were transferred to the bank account controlled by McDaniel.
How did you use the money? It is believed that McDaniel used the embezzled money to pay $23 million in credit cards and transferred another $8 million to personal bank accounts. Apparently, he also used millions of dollars in miscellaneous indeterminate expenses