A former Defense Department employee pleaded guilty to laundering money for Nigerian scammers
Samuel D. Marcus, 33, of Oreland, served as a "money mule," collecting and transferring victims' funds into overseas bank accounts or cryptocurrency exchanges, prosecutors said.
A former Department of Defense employee from Oreland pleaded guilty Monday to helping Nigerian scammers launder millions of dollars they collected during phishing or extortion operations.
Samuel D. Marcus, 33, was arrested earlier this year and charged with crimes including conspiracy and money laundering. Prosecutors said he served as a “money mule” for fraudsters who used aliases to target victims in schemes including cyber or tax fraud, romance fraud, or attacks on business email addresses.
The FBI said those types of crimes cost Americans more than $20 billion last year, with scammers targeting vulnerable people using a variety of tactics designed to exploit or steal peoples’ personal information and money. The Pew Research Center said nearly three-quarters of American adults have been subjected to some form of online fraud, such as credit card fraud, ransomware, or unwittingly giving away personal information.
Marcus knew that the fraudsters he was interacting with — who used the names “Rachel Jude” and “Ned McMurray” — were committing sophisticated digital crimes, prosecutors said, in part because he was first targeted by those same fraudsters in an online romance scam.
Still, Marcus went on to help the scammers collect and transfer millions of dollars through bank accounts he created and into overseas accounts or cryptocurrency exchanges between 2023 and 2025.
Prosecutors did not say how much Marcus was able to keep for himself, but said in court documents that he was able to collect small amounts from each transaction. At the time, prosecutors said, he was also working as a logistics specialist for the Department of Defense.
He continued committing his crimes even after FBI agents told him that money passing through his accounts had been stolen from other people, prosecutors said.
Marcus said little in court Monday beyond responding to routine legal questions from U.S. District Judge Joel H. Slomsky, and he has been held in federal custody since earlier this year.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in October.
