North Carolina man sentenced to more than five years in prison, supervised release and ordered to pay restitution for bank fraud conspiracy

Published 9:34 am Sunday, September 18, 2022

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A Raleigh man was sentenced on September 6, 2022 to 63 months in prison, five years of supervised release and ordered to pay criminal restitution to State Employees’ Credit Union for conspiracy to commit bank fraud, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Eastern District of North Carolina. Carl Edwin Parker Jr. pleaded guilty to the charge on October 20, 2021.

According to court documents and other information presented in court, between around May 2019 and April 2020, Parker and his co-conspirators stole checks from residential mailboxes and altered them to make them payable to individuals that were recruited to serve as “money mules.”

“The ‘money mules’ agreed to deposit the altered checks into their bank accounts, after which Parker and his co-conspirators cashed out the stolen funds at area ATMs,” stated the release. “Parker and his fraud ring stole checks from more than 100 victims and caused financial losses of more than $150,000.”

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Parker was convicted of federal bank fraud in 2017 for engaging in similar activity in the Eastern District of North Carolina, according to the release.

Co-conspirators in the current case also included Khristopher Taion Stukes, Kauri Maleek Johnson-Chavis and Jallani Jewels Stewart. Each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud in separate related cases: Stewart was sentenced on March 31, 2022 to 57 months’ imprisonment and five years of supervised release; Johnson-Chavis was sentenced on January 14, 2022 to 63 months’ imprisonment and five years of supervised release and Stukes was sentenced on February 10, 2021 to 21 months’ imprisonment and five years of supervised release. All three were ordered to pay criminal restitution.

Michael Easley, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, made the announcement after sentencing by U.S. District Judge Terrence W. Boyle. The United States Postal Inspection Service, Atlanta Division, together with the Raleigh Police Department, Wake County Sheriff’s Office and other local law enforcement partners investigated the case and Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam F. Hulbig prosecuted.

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