Today the prosecution rested in the Jeremy Johnson case. Bottom line is that Wells Fargo has no losses from the shell companies Johnson setup to acquire merchant accounts to perpetuate his scams, however the prosecution does not need to prove that Well Fargo lost money to show bank fraud.
The real victims here, which it seems that the prosecution missed, are the tens of thousands people that Johnson defrauded, that he otherwise would not have been able to defraud had he not had access to those merchant accounts. Hence Johnson committed bank fraud by acquiring merchant accounts that he shouldn’t have had because he had programs that were, as many of his customers described them, “scams.”
Johnson keeps intimating that there are no client victims…but if that is so, why did thousands of people chargeback? Why did he have to create shell corporations to process credit cards? If his programs added value, then why did he have to create a couple hundred shell corporations to “load balance” his transactions?
If Johnson is acquitted, it’s not because he is innocent, it’s because he did a better job than the Feds…and Johnson is one slick, slick guy. We shall see in the upcoming weeks, it’s now Johnson’s turn to present his case to the jury.
