A 54-year-old woman from Tiverton has pleaded guilty to attempted bank fraud in a scheme that diverted nearly $225,000 from a Tennessee construction company.
Brenda Partin entered her plea in federal court on Tuesday. Her sentencing is set for June 10, 2025.
The fraud took place in August and September 2022. It involved a hacked email account that fooled a global snack company into sending vendor payments to Partin’s bank account in Rhode Island.
Acting U.S. Attorney Sara Miron Bloom says the scam resulted in four misdirected payments adding up to about $225,000.
On September 8, 2022, Partin used $26,470.05 of the money to buy a car in her name. That same day, she had someone open a second account and moved $30,000 from the first fraudulent account into it.
In December 2022, the bank shut down the second account, freezing roughly $108,000 left in it.
For the next nine months, Partin and others tried to get the bank to release the money through various claims.
According to information presented to the court, in May 2022, a compromised email account belonging to a Tennessee-based construction company was used to deceive a global snack-food company into altering its vendor payment information to a Rhode Island bank. An investigation later determined that the bank account to which the payment was misdirected belonged to Partin.
Between August 15 and September 19, 2022, the Tennessee company sent four payments totaling nearly $225,000 that were intended to pay the snack-food company to the defendant’s account. Withdrawals from the account began almost immediately. On September 8, 2022, Partin wired $26,470.05 from the account for the purchase of an automobile, which she registered in her name. On that same date, Partin directed an associate to open a second account at a local bank, into which $30,000 was transferred from the first account. Over the next four months, multiple withdrawals and purchases were made from both accounts.
On December 5, 2022, the bank closed the second account with a remaining balance of approximately $108,000. For the next nine months, the defendant and others attempted to convince bank employees to release the funds. Partin falsely claimed that the money was a settlement from a car accident; that the money had come from Partin’s fiancé; that the co-holder of the bank account earned the money working in Turkey and that he had leukemia and the funds were needed to address his affairs in the event he passed away; and in August 2023, the defendant claimed to a bank employee that her associate had passed away and that she needed the money to pay funeral expenses.
The Rhode Island State Police Financial Crimes Unit and the FBI’s Rhode Island Complex Financial Crimes Task Force investigated the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Juliane Klein is handling the prosecution.
A federal judge will decide Partin’s sentence, taking into account U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other legal factors.