Contraband cellphones are invaluable to inmates, however within the palms of Arthur Lee Cofield, who’s serving a 14-year sentence for armed theft at a Georgia state jail, a cell phone turned out to be value $11 million, federal prosecutors stated.
From the jail in Butts County, about 45 miles south of Atlanta, Mr. Cofield known as the Charles Schwab Company in June 2020 and impersonated a billionaire named S.Ok., who was later recognized as Sidney Kimmel, based on a federal indictment.
Mr. Cofield spoke with an organization consultant about opening a checking account. After Mr. Cofield was instructed he wanted a type of identification and a utility invoice, a co-conspirator texted him an image of Mr. Kimmel’s driver’s license and a utility invoice, prosecutors stated.
Mr. Cofield was so convincing that he persuaded the financial-services big to switch $11 million from Mr. Kimmel’s checking account to a treasured metals supplier in Idaho to purchase 6,106 American Eagle gold cash, prosecutors stated.
From there, Mr. Cofield used his contraband cellphone to rent a personal safety firm to take the cash from Boise, Idaho, to Atlanta on a chartered aircraft. After the cash had been delivered, he contacted the proprietor of a six-bedroom home on 1.4 wooded acres in Atlanta and provided $4.4 million for the property, prosecutors stated.
With the assistance of accomplices, Mr. Cofield paid $720,000 money as a down cost and later the total stability, additionally in money, based on a federal indictment filed in December 2020.
Jose Morales, who was the warden of the unit that housed Mr. Cofield, couldn’t be reached. He instructed The Atlanta-Journal Structure, which had beforehand reported on the case, that Mr. Cofield was “a shrewd, clever particular person who may con you out of tens of millions.”
Mr. Cofield, 31, was charged with a number of federal counts, together with conspiracy to commit financial institution fraud, aggravated identification theft, cash laundering and conspiracy to commit cash laundering, based on court docket paperwork. He has pleaded not responsible. A lawyer for Mr. Cofield, Steve Sadow, declined to touch upon Friday.
Nearly two years later, federal prosecutors and Mr. Sadow have a urgent drawback: What to do with the Atlanta property?
In court docket paperwork filed on Oct. 7, the 2 sides requested a choose for permission to promote the property so the proceeds might be held till Mr. Cofield’s case is resolved. The indictment stated that Mr. Cofield, if convicted, should forfeit any proceeds he acquired arising from his offenses.
Within the submitting, each events stated the property, which was valued at about $3.5 million in 2020, is vacant, has been “quickly deteriorating” and is prone to shedding its fair-market worth as a result of it has not been maintained.
The checking account that prosecutors stated Mr. Cofield stole from belonged to Mr. Kimmel, a 94-year-old vogue mogul who has bankrolled box-office hits like “Moneyball,” “United 93” and “Loopy Wealthy Asians,” together with quirky flops that have been however critically acclaimed, like “Lars and the Actual Lady,” a love story that includes a intercourse doll.
Some key particulars concerning the scheme stay unclear: Court docket paperwork don’t reveal why Mr. Kimmel was focused. And prosecutors didn’t say within the indictment how Mr. Cofield — who can be going through tried homicide expenses in Fulton County, Ga., in an unrelated case — was in a position to purchase the cellphone, which they are saying he hid in his jail cell.
A spokeswoman for the Georgia Division of Corrections declined an interview request however stated in an announcement that the company had a “strong plan” for cracking down on contraband telephones.
The spokeswoman, Joan Heath, stated that about 5,600 contraband telephones have been confiscated in fiscal yr 2022, together with greater than 1,300 since July. Citing safety causes, she didn’t disclose particulars of the crackdown however stated that “any and all sources accessible” have been getting used to curb the apply.
“A type of efforts consists of conducting shakedowns throughout all of our services,” she stated, including that the tactic had been in place for quite a few years and had not been the results of Mr. Cofield’s case.
Two co-conspirators, Eldridge Bennett and his daughter, Eliayah Bennett, additionally face expenses in reference to the case and have pleaded not responsible, based on court docket paperwork. Their attorneys didn’t instantly reply to emails late on Friday.
Mr. Kimmel couldn’t be reached. A spokeswoman for Charles Schwab stated that the consumer within the case had been totally reimbursed.
“As quickly as Schwab was conscious of suspected fraudulent exercise, we launched an investigation, initiated measures to guard the consumer’s account, and notified the authorities,” the spokeswoman, Tatiana Stead, stated in an electronic mail. She declined to remark additional due to the persevering with investigation.
Jack Begg contributed analysis.