A California con man is facing hard time after duping a major trade-in program out of more than $450,000. David Shemtov, a 31-year-old from Los Angeles, was handed a three-year and one-month prison sentence for orchestrating a cell phone trade-in scam, exploiting a loophole and fleecing the victim company via inflated device values. Following his time behind bars, Shemtov also faces three years of supervised release and has been ordered by the court to pay $532,542 in restitution and cough up a $100,000 fine.

Wire fraud has Shemtov entangled after a jury found him guilty of deceitfully negotiating thousands of cell phone trade-ins. U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan emphasized the severity of the crime, saying "Shemtov chose to exploit this process to fraudulently obtain substantially inflated value for devices he traded and at great expense to the victim company," in a statement obtained by the U.S. Department of Justice. Buchanan's office clarified that Shemtov's scheme, lasting over a year, involved sneaky tactics like providing false information about the traded devices to manipulate the system for his own gain.

The scam's blueprint revealed that the accused was trading in phones under fake names, altering the devices' settings, and even remotely unlocking them to escape detection. According to the court records, Shemtov opened multiple post office boxes across various states and used this dispersed network, along with fabricated identities and several email addresses, to carry out his fraudulent plan. This chicanery fooled the third-party provider handling the trades into overpaying by hundreds of dollars per device, with Shemtov swapping out what were essentially $60 iPhone 6's for the value of $550 iPhone XS Max models.

FBI Atlanta Assistant Special Agent in Charge Sean Burke underscored the financial damage wrought by Shemtov, asserting, "Shemtov used lies and schemes to pad his own pockets, causing financial harm to the companies and ultimately costing consumers more money," according to the same Justice Department release. The hefty price of Shemtov's cunning reflected in more than 1,000 successful deceits out of over 8,000 trade attempts, culminating in a windfall of approximately half a million dollars swindled.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation teased out the threads of this sophisticated fraud, leading to Shemtov's conviction on November 20, 2023. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Angela Adams and Alison B. Prout led the prosecution, ensuring that justice was served. The message from law enforcement is crystal clear: Scammers like Shemtov may think they're slipping through the cracks, but the FBI is always ready to pull the rug out from under such fraudulent footwork.