Date: Dec. 4, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov BOSTON — A manufacturing supervisor for a luxury jewelry company was sentenced today for stealing over $1.7 million in gold, silver and platinum from his employer over a period of more than three years. Benjamin Preacher of North Attleboro, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley to 59 days in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release, including 10 months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service. Preacher was also ordered to forfeit $1,267,093. The government recommended a sentence of 30 months in prison. In June 2024, Preacher pleaded guilty to one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods and one count of engaging in unlawful monetary transactions. From 2018 until early 2024, Preacher worked as a manufacturing supervisor at a Rhode Island facility operated by a company that sells luxury items, including jewelry made from gold, silver and platinum. Preacher used his position overseeing the production and security of high-end jewelry to steal scrap precious metals from the company’s facility in Rhode Island. Preacher then drove the stolen metals into Massachusetts and then sold them to various businesses in Massachusetts. An image of some of the stolen metals appears below. United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy and Jonathan Wlodyka, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Boston Field Office made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kriss Basil, Deputy Chief of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit 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.
