Princeton Alum Used Investors, Friends As 'Personal Piggy Banks': Feds

PRINCETON, NJ — A Princeton alum and former resident faces more than two dozen federal charges after using "a litany of fraud schemes" to steal money from friends and investors, officials said.

The U.S. Attorney's office announced 29 charges against Ford Graham on Thursday, which include wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering. Graham, 60, is accused of using stolen money to fund personal expenses including private school tuition for his children, and trying to steal millions more in an email scheme.

The New Jersey Attorney General's office had sued Graham in 2019, claiming he and his wife defrauded friends to pay for their own luxury vacations, country club payments, and other personal expenses during a period between 2012 and 2014.

The lawsuit alleged that Graham and his wife used social connections in the college town to get sales in his scam investments, promising prospective investors up to 20 percent returns on their funds.

Now, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Graham was involved in two additional schemes: One to defraud merchant processing institutions with fraudulent credit card transactions, and an email-based conspiracy where he and others posed as trusted parties to take victims' money.

Graham is accused of taking more than $2.6 million from the initial scheme, and attempting to take $6 million in the business email compromise scheme, said U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger. The payment processing scheme resulted in tens of thousands of dollars of losses, officials added.

"The indictment sets forth the different strategies the defendant allegedly employed to dupe innocent third parties into giving the defendant their hard earned money," Sellinger said.

In the initial incident, officials said Graham held himself as the chief decision maker for dozens of of businesses under the umbrella organization Vulcan Capital Corporation, and touted his experience in investment deals. One victim reportedly invested more than $2 million with Graham, "relying on Graham’s misrepresentations and omissions regarding the investment." Officials said Graham used much of that money for his own personal gain.

The scheme to defraud payment processing institutions took place between December 2017 and February 2018, officials said. Graham would allegedly use a platform to process fraudulent charges on stolen credit card numbers, then quickly deposit the money to other accounts.

He is accused of providing fabricated invoices and credit card authorization forms, fabricated e-mails, forged signatures, and altered bank statements when the processing company asked for documentation.

And, the alleged email scheme took place between Feb. 2017 and June 2018, according to Sellinger's office. Members of the conspiracy would send fraudulent messages to victims who were scheduled to make "substantial outgoing wire transfers" to third parties, said officials. Graham would pose as the intended recipient in an email, and get the victims to re-route them to an account he controlled.

In one instance, officials said a fraudulent email successfully got one victim to re-route a payment of more than $650,000 to a bank account that Graham had access to.

“We allege Graham used a litany of fraud schemes to steal money from his investors,” said Special Agent in Charge James E. Dennehy of the FBI's Newark office. “Our thorough investigation illustrates how he moved from one to the next, using millions of dollars to fund his lavish life but not his promised investments. The victims in this case, and thousands of others across the country, are losing incredible amounts of money to fraudsters who only see them as personal piggy banks."

Graham's defense counsel is Assistant Federal Public Defender Andrea Aldana, Esq. He faces 14 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of securities fraud, three counts of aggravated identity theft, nine counts of money laundering and one count of engaging in unlawful money transactions.

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