After a Texas man pleaded guilty to helping steal nearly $400,000 from a Maine man, a U.S. attorney offered tips on how people can protect themselves from similar scams.
Kyle Lawless Pollar, 27, of Texas entered a guilty plea to four counts of wire fraud Tuesday in U.S. District Court of Maine in Bangor. Through a plea agreement, one count of bank fraud and four counts of aggravated identity theft were dismissed.
Pollar was a “knowing money mule,” accepting money he knew wasn’t obtained through legal means, U.S. Attorney Andrew McCormack said. There are various ways people can help protect themselves from similar schemes, McCormack said.
Roughly $361,000 was stolen from a Stonington man while he and his wife were on a two-week sailing vacation in September 2022, according to court records. The money was taken by an unknown person and transferred to Pollar. Pollar received four wire transfers totaling $360,880 into his PNC bank account with $0 in it, court records said.
The victim did not know the people involved in the theft, McCormack said.
“He was taking this, realizing that it was ill-gotten gains, and then accepting these wire transfers,” McCormack said. “Basically taking bank accounts that had nothing in it and then suddenly had tens of thousands of dollars.”
The transfers were made possible after an unknown person called Maine Savings Federal Credit Union while the victim was on vacation and changed the contact phone number on the victim’s account, court records said. The person called back about four minutes later to update the account’s email contact, too.
When the victim returned from vacation, he could not log into his accounts and realized something was wrong, according to court records.
McCormack would not share further details about how the person was able to bypass security measures to make such updates, in part to avoid providing instruction on how others may replicate the scheme.
To avoid falling victim to such schemes, people should make sure their passwords are complicated and differ across various platforms, McCormack said. Using two factor authentication is also a smart decision.
“Whatever it is that they’re offering [for security] … I would definitely take whatever the more complicated option” is, McCormack said.
He said he checks his bank and credit card accounts nearly every day and suggests others do the same. That way if something is wrong, it can be caught quickly and fixed.
In this case, the bank has reimbursed the victim for his missing funds. The federal government will request restitution from Pollar for the bank and insurance company, McCormack said.
Investigators have not identified the person who made the account changes, McCormack said.
“Unfortunately these guys are good at what they do,” McCormack said. “It’s a constant source of frustration and we haven’t at this point been able to track them. The chase has gone kind of cold at this point in terms of trying to figure out who it actually was that was doing it.”
Pollar’s sentencing date is not yet scheduled. He is out on a personal recognizance bond.
