A New York man who laundered nearly $1 million for a fraud network that preyed on elderly victims across the United States, including in Arizona, has been sentenced in Tucson to 121 months — just over ten years — in federal prison. Ivan Wilbur Seales, 58, a resident of New York and a citizen of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, was sentenced on November 6 by U.S. District Judge Scott H. Rash after a jury found him guilty of conspiracy to commit money laundering, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona said. He was also ordered to pay approximately $855,000 in restitution to the numerous victims who suffered losses.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Prosecutors said Seales kept a portion of the ill-gotten gains for himself and helped the scammers launder the rest through a maze of financial transactions — shell companies, cryptocurrency transfers, cash withdrawals and other transfers offshore. His job in the network was the money: the victims were found and deceived by others in the scheme, and Seales moved what they sent.
How the scam worked
The network targeted elderly victims with phishing attacks — pop-ups and websites that impersonated trusted entities such as banks and technology companies. Victims were directed to call other scammers who falsely claimed to be representatives of legitimate companies such as Apple or Microsoft, the Justice Department said.
Some victims received a phishing email or text message saying a charge had appeared on their account from the Geek Squad, PayPal or an anti-virus software company. Those charges never occurred; they were invented by the fraudsters to lure victims into calling. Once on the phone, victims were led to believe the 'legitimate companies' had mistakenly transferred an 'over-refunded amount' into their bank accounts — and, as instructed, victims transferred their own money back to the scammers, believing they were returning the overpayment.
Other victims were lied to and told their bank accounts had been hacked or compromised; at least one victim was told his account was linked to child pornography. Fraudsters directed victims to move their money to various locations to 'protect' their accounts or to 'catch' the scammers — instructions that instead delivered life savings into the network's hands, with numerous victims losing significant portions of their savings.
At least two of the victims lived in southern Arizona, according to reporting on the case. One Pima County resident mailed Seales a $185,000 cashier's check in February 2023 and then wired more than $220,000 to other companies in response to fraudulent invoices — more than $400,000 sent in all by that one victim before the scheme was disrupted. A Sierra Vista victim received a fake Apple support warning and sent money to Seales through the payment app Zelle.
Source: The Phoenix Focal
Seales was arrested in February 2023. After his arrest he agreed to cooperate with investigators, but court filings show he continued messaging a contact in the scam network and asked for a cut of roughly $500,000 a month in stolen funds; Seales claimed he was keeping the line open for police, and Arizona detectives told him to stop trying to 'commit a crime to solve a crime,' according to the same reporting. He has already appealed his conviction.
The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the New York State Police, with support from other state and local law enforcement agencies. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona, in Tucson, handled the prosecution. The case is number 24-CR-0419-TUC-SHR, and the sentencing announcement is release number 2026-188.
In the scheme described by prosecutors, the contact always started with the victim: a pop-up, email or text invented a charge or a hack, and a phone call did the rest. Banks and tech companies in these cases never asked victims to move money to 'protect' an account or to return an 'over-refund' — those instructions were the theft itself. Older relatives, including immigrant seniors managing savings in a second language, are the targets this network chose.
For Arizona's Indian and Punjabi families — concentrated around Phoenix but spread across the state — the case is a direct warning rather than distant news: the victims were ordinary account holders at home, reached through the same pop-ups, texts and support-scam calls that arrive on phones and computers every day, and the losses fell on retirement savings built over decades.
What happens next
Seales begins a 121-month federal sentence, and the roughly $855,000 restitution order stands as the court's measure of what victims are owed — though restitution orders in fraud cases are collected over time and rarely make every victim whole quickly. His appeal of the conviction, already filed according to reporting on the case, will proceed separately and does not by itself undo the sentence. The Justice Department's announcement did not name other members of the international network.