Buffalo man pleads guilty to bilking two banks out of nearly half a million dollars

Date: Oct. 22, 2024

Contact: [email protected]

Buffalo, NY - U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross announced today that Joshua Parra, formerly of Buffalo, NY, now living in Melbourne, Florida, pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael J. Roemer to bank fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles M. Kruly, who is handling the case, stated that between Dec. 28, 2021, and Jan. 6, 2022, Parra defrauded Bancorp and Stride Bank by creating 94 fictitious disputed transactions on behalf of 11 customers of Fintech Company 1, a financial technology company that offers customers mobile banking services. However, none of the 11 customers' accounts with Fintech Company 1 had transactions that would justify such disputes. Nearly all of the fictitious disputed transactions were in the amount of $5,000. As a result, funds were transferred from settlement accounts, held at Bancorp and Stride Bank, to accounts maintained by the Fintech Company 1 customers for whom Parra created the fictitious disputed transactions. Losses to Bancorp and Stride Bank totaled approximately $459,000.

The plea is the result of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Thomas Fattorusso, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Special Agent-in-Charge Miraglia.

Sentencing will be scheduled at a later date.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.