A former New Jersey resident was charged with various federal crimes this week after he allegedly scammed people out of millions of dollars in multiple scams, including an investment scheme in which he spent portions of the money on vacations and school tuition for his children.
A 29-count indictment charged Ford Graham, 60, who used to reside in Princeton, with 14 counts of wire fraud, three counts of aggravated identity theft, nine counts of money laundering and one count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud and engaging in unlawful money transactions, the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of New Jersey said on Thursday.
He was previously charged with multiple federal crimes in April 2021. He was also charged along with his wife, Katherine Graham, in an alleged $5 million Ponzi scheme in 2019.
Graham owned dozens of businesses under an umbrella organization called Vulcan Capital Corporation from 2012 to 2013. As the CEO of the companies, he falsely represented himself as a successful investor, the indictment alleged. By doing this, he was able to collect funds from people who thought Graham would be investing their money, including one person who handed over more than $2 million, federal prosecutors said.
He then spent a large portion of the investor money on personal expenses including vacations abroad and private school tuition for his children. In total, the investors lost about $2.6 million, authorities said.
Graham is accused of running a separate scam from 2017 to 2018 that involved accessing credit card numbers and charging the cards without the customers’ authorization. He then transferred the funds from a payment processing service to external accounts, making it impossible for the banks to reverse any disputed transactions, prosecutors alleged. He is also accused of trying to cover up the crimes by fabricating documents including invoices, credit card authorization forms and bank statements. The credit card scheme resulted in losses totaling tens of thousands of dollars, according to the indictment.
Around the same time of the credit card scam, Graham was also operating an email scheme that persuaded victims to send him and his conspirators about $6 million in payments, authorities alleged. The fraudulent emails tricked people into thinking that they were from a third-party that they owed money to and asked the victims to reroute their scheduled payments to different accounts. In one instance, a single victim sent Graham a payment of approximately $650,000, prosecutors alleged.
Stories by Nicolas Fernandes
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Nicolas Fernandes may be reached at nfernandes@njadvancemedia.com.