MACON, Ga. — A Macon man already charged in a Bibb County real-estate fraud scheme is also accused of taking part in an international fraud conspiracy that allegedly reached from Georgia to Kentucky to Romania.
Investigators say the group cheated online auto buyers out of millions.
A federal grand jury in Lexington, Kentucky, indicted Dimitrious Brown and four other men in February.
Brown appeared in U.S. District Court in Macon Tuesday, making his first appearance on the federal charges.
On April 2, a Bibb County grand jury also indicted Brown and five other people, one of them a former Bibb County deputy. Prosecutors say the group illegally tried to take possession of six homes they didn't own.
The new federal charges say Brown and four others were part of a conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, money laundering, identity theft and counterfeit trademark trafficking.
These acts, the indictment says, were part of a "wide-scale online auction fraud scheme... posting false advertisements for goods online, often using stolen identities and trademarks, from legitimate online auction companies."
Their goal the indictment says, was "to defraud United States-based victims out of money and laundering the money through channels in the United States and ultimately Eastern Europe."
The scammers defrauded people using websites like Amazon, eBay, Craigslist and Autotrader.com, federal prosecutors say.
Federal authorities say the scammers often created sympathetic stories, such as impersonating military members who needed to sell their cars before heading overseas.
The conspiracy was based in Alexandria, Romania, and prosecutors called the group the "Alexandria Online Auction Fraud Network." Their American associates operated in locations across the United States, prosecutors say.
Brown helped the group as a money launderer, who converted their American profits into bitcoin and transferred that to Eastern Europe, the indictment says.
Bitcoin, the indictment explains, is a digital currency that operates as a "peer-to-peer payment system."
As an example, the indictment says Brown obtain bank-account information from two people -- identified only as J.C. and H.M. -- from Suntrust Bank, BB&T, Robins Financial Credit Union, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Regions Bank, Chase Bank and Woodforest Bank.
Brown allegedly passed that information on to a co-conspirator, who directed victims to wire money into those accounts.
Then Brown allegedly withdrew the money from those accounts and converted them to bitcoin.
Another count in the indictment says Brown allegedly helped others obtain false Florida drivers licenses.
Brown faces charges of money-laundering conspiracy, RICO conspiracy and identity theft.
No trial date has been set in either case.
