North Carolina repeat offender pleads guilty to wire fraud

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

A North Carolina man has admitted stealing mail from residential mailboxes and utilizing stolen info to commit wire fraud, a federal prosecutor stated.

Soheil Akhavan Rezaie, 37, entered his responsible plea Tuesday earlier than a U.S. Justice of the Peace decide in Charlotte, U.S. Legal professional Dena King stated.

Statements and plea paperwork confirmed that, starting final yr and thru March, Rezaie and others focused Charlotte neighborhoods and surrounding areas and stole massive portions of mail, together with bank cards, tax types and private and enterprise financial institution checks, a information launch stated.

Rezaie admitted in courtroom that he altered the quantities of the stolen checks or modified the names of the payees to his personal after which deposited them into financial institution accounts he managed. He then withdrew the funds earlier than the victims and banks may discover out the checks had been stolen, prosecutors stated.

Rezaie pleaded responsible to wire fraud, which carries a most sentence of 20 years and a $250,000 positive. No sentencing date has been set.

Prosecutors stated when Rezaie engaged within the fraud, he was on supervised launch for a 2017 mail theft conviction. A second revocation of Rezaie’s supervised launch is pending for violating the phrases of his supervised launch for the 2017 conviction.