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Arkansas banker John Nock and three other men have received prison sentences ranging from 8 to 20 years for their roles in a USD 18 million fraud and money laundering scheme involving the offering of standby letters of credit as lucrative investment devices.
As previously reported (Mar 2022 DCW 46), Nock, founder of The Brittingham Group, and his business associate, Brian Brittsan of California, claimed to offer high-yield investments in the form of "structured" financial transactions involving standby LCs, bank guarantees, and other instruments they offered to monetize, promising investors returns as much as 300% within 20-30 days while guaranteeing the safety of the investments through use of fraudulent letters on third- party letterhead.
Nock and Brittsan instructed victims to send their funds to bank accounts controlled by co- conspirators Kevin Griffith and Alexander Ituma, both of Utah. Money was then transferred through a complex network of global bank accounts.
According to the Arkansas Business journal, authorities said the scheme ran from 2013 to 2021 and often involved phony standby letters of credit from the Royal Bank of Scotland in London.
On 18 March 2024, the US Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs announced prison sentences for Nock (20 years and 10 months), Brittsan (10 years), Griffith (12 years and 6 months), and Ituma (8 years and 4 months).
"For nearly a decade, the defendants brazenly and repeatedly lied to investors, defrauding them out of more than $18 million and laundering the proceeds of their crime through a complex web of bank accounts around the world," said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the US Justice Department's Criminal Division. "The defendants have now been held to account for their crimes."
(Sources: Arkansas Business; US Justice Department, Office of Public Affairs)