Cops: 3-man fraud ring busted for stealing electronics

Clients under Tech Data had already reportedly been robbed of $230,000 by the suspects, according to a press release from Atlanta police spokesman John Chafee. Tech Data’s fraud manager for the United States, Scott Heim, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he detected fraud to about eight of his customers and tipped off police.

All three men were charged with theft by receiving stolen property and criminal receipt of goods. They are being held in the Fulton County jail without bail — partly because Rodney Sandridge was arrested in May on the same charges and had bailed out on a $33,000 bond, said Sgt. Paul Cooper of the Atlanta Police Major Fraud Unit.

“He went right back to doing what he was doing,” Cooper said.

Police said the suspects have been running this scheme since October or longer. They fraudulently began or revived several businesses and used them to open fake lines of credit with smaller electronic companies. Cooper said the suspects reportedly sold the electronics they got through these lines of credit to other small companies, pawn shops or to individuals.

Cooper said the fake businesses had swindled victims out of about $300,000.

“It’s the mom and pop distributors who will lose money,” he said.

So far, police know only about the allegedly defrauded businesses that worked with Tech Data Corp. Most of those businesses have not been local. Cooper said it’s possible there are cases across the country that could eventually be linked to the fraud ring involving businesses that don’t work with Tech Data Corp.

“We’ve seen this before [in Atlanta],” he said. “But this group was hitting it hot and heavy.”

Cooper said the victims were probably fooled by the fake businesses run by the three men because they were based out of “virtual offices” — a space that can be rented out with a receptionist and mail service, but does not require the renter to work out of the space.

The offices gave the businesses what Cooper called “Google legitimacy,” meaning if vendors were to “Google” Enterprise Analytical or any of the other fake businesses, they would find the address of a legitimate office building.

The men started two other fraudulent companies — G2G Properties and Marketing Solutions Inc. — and based them out of “virtual offices” around Atlanta, Chafee said.

Sandridge allegedly signed for the $30,000 worth of laptops at a “virtual office” on Lenox Road on June 11, loaded them into his car and took them to Peachtree Street where Sheikh-Sajjadieh was prepared to sell the items to another buyer for a portion of the profits.

The stolen property, including 30 computers from this scheme and four televisions stolen in a previous fraud scheme, were recovered after the arrest, Chafee said.

Heim said the Fraud Investigation Department of Data Tech has dealt with bigger cases than this one before, but considers these arrests a “win.”

“There’s much bigger thing going on, but the unique aspect of this case is there were domestic criminals behind this so that law enforcement could actually go out and catch the bad guys,” he said.

Heim said that a lot of the criminals their department works to find operate out of foreign countries, meaning that there’s a lot more red tape involved in their capture.

Jeff Riley, director of corporate securities for the Americas for Data Tech and Heim’s boss, said he also considers this case a success because of the cooperation the company got from law enforcement.

“Sometimes it’s really hard to get law enforcement involved [on these fraud cases],” he said. “Atlanta PD and Secret Services jumped on it and helped us out. Without their help, these guys would be defrauding customers and other companies alike. It was a big win for us.”