Officials reported yesterday that a Philadelphia man has been sentenced to just under five years in prison for running a fraud scheme that bilked the Lucas County Auditor’s office out of more than $622,000. Darren Barr, a 39-year-old from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was implicated in a two-year scam that exploited legitimate vendor relationships’ intricate workings to siphon off county funds. This charade lasted from March 2018 to November 2020.
According to information from the
U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio
, Barr, along with conspirators, whipped up a potent mixture of fake email accounts and forged documents to pose as legitimate businesses that the county was working with, the fraudsters meticulously acquired information about these businesses from public websites even the names of the county employees tasked with vendor payments were gathered and exploited, creating a scenario ripe for deception.
Barr’s sentencing, handed down by U.S. District Judge James G. Carr, includes 57 months of incarceration followed by three years of supervised release, not to mention the hefty $622,793.62 of restitution he’s been ordered to pay, according to a press release from the
U.S. Department of Justice
. The insidious plan Barr and his partners devised involved sending bona fide-looking invoices to the unassuming county employees from the sham vendor emails they controlled. These emails would then direct payment to fake corporate bank accounts set up by the dishonest group.
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