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A Canton woman was charged in federal court in Boston on Friday in connection with an ongoing investigation into a email scheme that sought to fool participants in real estate deals into transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars into bank accounts she controlled.

Bintu Toure, 26, was charged with wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. She is the second person to be charged in connection with this scheme, following the indictment of a Hingham man in July.

Toure allegedly conspired with others to open numerous bank accounts in Massachusetts in the name of sham companies, as part of an apparent business email compromise scheme.  A business email compromise scheme is a sophisticated type of scam often targeting businesses involved in wire transfer payments. The fraud is carried out by compromising or “spoofing” legitimate business email accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques, to cause employees of the victim company or other individuals involved in legitimate business transactions to transfer funds to accounts controlled by the scammers.

Prosecutors say that through the use of fraudulent invoices and spoofed email accounts, Toure conspired to trick the victims of the scheme into wiring hundreds of thousands of dollars to bank accounts under her control. Toure and her co-conspirators then transferred funds from the accounts on to others located overseas.

Toure faces up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for each of the charges.

Canton Woman Charged in Real Estate Email Scheme

by Banker & Tradesman time to read: 1 min
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