A California man has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for forging more than $1.2 million in money orders in California and Nevada.
49-year-old Sterlyn Lee Smith Jr. and dozens of others carried out a scheme to deposit altered money orders into bank accounts in other people's names and withdraw the money before banks discovered they were forged, according to a release from the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada.
As part of the scheme, Smith and others purchased money orders at United States Post Offices in California and Nevada. Then, they fraudulently altered the money orders to high dollar amounts.
Smith and others then deposited the fraudulent money orders into bank accounts at two banks in Nevada and California and made cash withdrawals from the accounts.
The scheme was carried out between July of 2013 and February of 2019. Over its course, Smith and others deposited and attempted to deposit more than 1,200 forged money orders totaling more than $1.2 million.
Smith pleaded guilty to two counts of bank fraud, one count for each of the banks victimized.
In addition to imprisonment, Smith was ordered to pay $432,482.63 in restitution and will have three years of supervised release once he is out of prison.
