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U.S. Attorney John H. Durham announced on Tuesday that Rachael Alexander, also known as Rachael Vierling, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton in New Haven.
Judge Arterton ordered Alexander to pay restitution totaling nearly $443,808.
Alexander, who is released on bond, was ordered to report to prison on April 18.
Her imprisonment will be followed by three years of supervised release, for participating in two fraud schemes.
According to court documents and statements made in court, the first scheme involved the theft of postal money orders. Alexander and her husband, Marc Anthony Alexander, devised a scheme to steal blocks of blank postal money orders from the U.S. Post Office in Old Greenwich.
The Alexanders and others then imprinted the money orders with various denominations using a computer font designed to make them appear to be authentic.
The Alexanders reportedly recruited Bernard Harris of Bridgeport into the scheme to organize others to cash the money orders, or deposit them into numerous bank accounts, either at an ATM or at a teller window.
The loss from this scheme was $313,570.
A second scheme reportedly involved the fraudulent sale of financed vehicles. In this scheme, the Alexanders took straw buyers to various car dealerships and had them fill out financing paperwork to buy high-end cars. Typically, the Alexanders would take the car and the straw buyers would sign a power of attorney form to allow them to obtain a new title for it. . The straw buyers financed more than $1 million in fraudulent car loans during the course of this scheme.
Marc Alexander, Rachael Alexander and Bernard Harris were arrested on April 26, 2016.
On January 17, 2017, Marc Alexander and Rachael Alexander each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud stemming from the postal money order scheme, and one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud stemming from the vehicle scheme.
On April 11, 2017, Marc Alexander was sentenced to 96 months of imprisonment.
Harris pleaded guilty to one to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud stemming from the postal money order scheme, and one count of wire fraud stemming from a separate fraudulent check scheme. On January 16, 2018, he was sentenced to 30 months of imprisonment.
The investigation was conducted by the Connecticut Financial Crimes Task Force¸ U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Westport Police Department and Greenwich Police Department.The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ray Miller.
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