Connecticut man sentenced to prison for fraud and money laundering

 

Date: Jan. 15, 2025

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

BOSTON — A Thomaston, Conn. man was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Springfield in connection with a scheme to obtain bank loans and money for projects in Saudi Arabia.

Hanibal Tayeh was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Mark G. Mastroianni to 27 months in prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release. In August 2024, Tayeh pleaded guilty to a superseding indictment with two counts of bank fraud, four counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering and one count of making a false bankruptcy declaration. Tayeh was originally charged and arrested in July 2018.

In 2013 and 2014, Tayeh used fake documents and misrepresentations to obtain a $9.1 million loan package and later a $400,000 extension of credit from a bank. A number of the fake documents and misrepresentations pertained to a business venture Tayeh claimed to be pursuing in Saudi Arabia. Further, he financially defrauded an individual by making misrepresentations related to construction projects he claimed to be pursuing in Saudi Arabia. Tayeh then laundered the proceeds of his fraud schemes through payments made to third parties for his personal obligations. Additionally, Tayeh made a false statement during a bankruptcy proceeding when he denied knowledge of a fake letter of credit that he created.

United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy; Thomas Demeo, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Boston Field Office; and Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher L. Morgan of the Springfield Branch Office prosecuted the case.

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.