Chase Matthew Griffin, a member of the Crips in South L.A., was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison for helping run a $2.8 million bank fraud scheme. U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton also ordered the 26-year-old to pay $307,386 in restitution.
Griffin pleaded guilty in March in downtown Los Angeles to one federal count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. He lived in Atlanta, Georgia, and also in Ontario and South Los Angeles.
Instagram and stolen checks
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Griffin and others took checks stolen from the mail, altered them, or created counterfeit versions so they would appear payable to accomplices. He used Instagram to recruit people with bank accounts and posted photographs of himself holding stacks of currency more than one foot high.
After recruiting an accomplice, Griffin and his co-conspirators deposited the fraudulent checks into that person’s account and withdrew the money before banks could detect the fraud. The case tied social media recruitment to a fast-moving cash-out method that depended on access to someone else’s account.
North Hollywood and Tarzana
In December 2023, a North Hollywood business reported that it had mailed three checks totaling nearly $84,490 from a U.S. Postal Service collection box in Tarzana. The checks were stolen and deposited into JPMorgan Chase accounts that did not belong to the intended recipients.
Law enforcement reviewed one Chase bank account and found a previous deposit of about $22,487 made at an ATM in Upland. One stolen check and another for nearly $29,081 were then used to create counterfeit checks with the same date, check number, and amount as the originals, but with different payees.
The money was quickly withdrawn and used for ATM withdrawals, Zelle and CashApp payments, a plane ticket, and card purchases at a Southern California casino. Investigators later traced the scheme to Griffin.
Griffin and restitution
The sentence closes Griffin’s part of the federal case with a prison term and a repayment order, but the record in this case does not say how many accomplices were involved. For anyone who mailed checks through the Postal Service, the case shows how quickly a stolen check can be altered, deposited, and emptied before the bank catches it.
