A Texas woman faces felony charges for her alleged role in a scam that defrauded a Farmington-based manufacturing company out of more than $160,000.
Gillian Bartley, 35, of Katy, Texas, has been charged by the Farmington Police Department with one count each of first-degree larceny, first-degree computer crime, first-degree identify theft, first-degree forgery and criminal impersonation.
According to the arrest warrant affidavit, authorities in March began investigating a fraud complaint after a representative from Farmington-based Trumpf, Inc. said the manufacturing company’s accounts payable department had received an email in January from Bertling Logistics requesting that its bank account information be changed. Bertling is a shipping and logistics company that regularly does business with Trumpf, the affidavit said.
Representatives from Trumpf at the time of the email did not realize that it was fraudulent and, following two wire transfers in February — one for about $75,000 and another for about $88,000 — using the bank information provided in the email, reported a loss of about $163,000, according to the affidavit.
About 10 days after the deposits, an accounts payable employee from Trumpf received another email from the email address purporting to be from Bertling Logistics and realized something in the message looked off, the affidavit said. She then contacted the chief financial officer for Bertling who confirmed the company had not requested the change in bank accounts.
Investigators found that the fraudulent account information could be traced to a bank in Texas.
A search warrant served on the account showed that it belonged to Bartley, according to the affidavit.
Authorities also found the account had been closed by the bank and flagged as “suspicious,” with internal notes from the bank that included “risk referral alert,” “suspected wrongdoer,” “customer is a risk to the bank” and “do not reopen this account or open any new accounts,” the affidavit said. The flags stemmed from several failed attempts at logging into the account using a mobile banking app, inconsistent IP addresses and other “suspicious account activity,” according to the affidavit.
Investigators wrote in the affidavit that the account had been identified as a “mule,” which is a term used to describe “someone who moves illegally acquired money from account to account on behalf of someone else.”
Activity associated with the account after the Trumpf wire transfers showed numerous ATM and debit card withdrawals, as well as a Capital One wire transfer for $30,000, according to the affidavit. There were also four electronic withdrawals totaling $111,000.
Investigators noted in the affidavit that Bartley had a “criminal history of theft.” An attorney representing Bartley told authorities during the investigation that her client would not consent to an interview with law enforcement, according to the affidavit.
Bartley was arrested by Farmington police on Nov. 13 and has been released on $165,000 bond. She is scheduled to appear in Hartford Superior Court on Jan. 9, 2024.
