Federal authorities announced charges Monday against a Defense Department employee they say was secretly working as a money mule for a Nigerian fraud network, siphoning millions of dollars into their accounts from American victims.
Samuel D. Marcus, 33, a resident of Oreland, Pennsylvania, created a limited liability company he used to shift the money around on behalf of the fraudsters, who operated everything from romance scams to tax fraud to business email compromise schemes, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Mr. Marcus was confronted by the FBI last year and was told he was laundering stolen money, but he continued to do it anyway.
The fraudsters he worked for operated under the names “Rachel Jude” and “Ned McMurray” and either paid him flat fees or allowed him to skim off some of the payments he handled, prosecutors said.
“Marcus personally deposited and transferred millions of dollars of fraudulently obtained money into and through his personal and business accounts, while fully aware that ’Rachel Jude’ and ’Ned McMurray’ were scammers who carried out sophisticated fraud schemes,” the Justice Department said in a statement announcing the charges.
Until his arrest on Feb. 3, he worked as a specialist at the Defense Logistics Agency, and held a security clearance. When authorities moved in to arrest him they found him holding more than 100 credit and debit cards.
Prosecutors described him as suffering from brain damage, and said his computer history showed web searches and conversations that suggested he had pondered killing his parents, stabbing himself, burning down his home or killing the children of the Nigerian scammers.
He also shared the identity of an FBI agent with the Nigerian fraudsters, the government said.
They said they’re also investigating him for tax fraud, citing a $930,943.03 check the Treasury Department cut him last April.
The indictment says Mr. Marcus operated more than a dozen bank accounts. When money landed in his accounts, he would quickly move to convert it to cryptocurrency, then shift it abroad.
In one transaction recorded in the indictment Mr. Marcus is accused of receiving about $200,000 from another money mule in a Bank of America account on July 3, 2024. Over the next 10 months, that account bought about $190,000 in cryptocurrency.
Prosecutors said the scam ran from July 2023 to December 2025.
At some point in 2025 the FBI confronted him and warned him the money was stolen from American victims, and he even seemed to acknowledge the point in his own communications, referring to the Nigerians as “scammers.”
He faces six counts of illegal monetary transactions, one count of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Mr. Marcus pleaded not guilty. A magistrate judge ordered him detained.
He has been assigned a public defender. The Washington Times has sought comment from the lawyer.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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