The feds are locking up a 23-year Vanguard [profile] vet for stealing from missing customers.

U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson sentenced Scott Capps to four years in prison, plus three years of supervised release, restitution of more than $2.1 million, and forfeiture of more than $600,000, U.S. Attorney William McSwain confirmed Thursday. 48-year-old Capps, a resident of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, pled guilty back in March to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, money laundering, and filing false tax returns. The judge ordered Capps to report to prison in October.

The Philadelphia Inquirer and InvestmentNews reported on the sentencing.

"Vanguard further tightened and enhanced controls to protect our clients and the firm since the incident," Vanguard spokeswoman Carol Wegemann told the Inquirer. "We're not going to comment on the case further."

Capps, who spent 23 years with Vanguard before leaving in 2014, used subordinates' passwords to issue checks from abandoned accounts, working with a co-conspirator (his brother-in-law, Lance Tobin, who pled guilty after being charged in 2016), according to McSwain, and then Capps failed to report that money on his taxes. The abandoned accounts were supposed go through escheatment, i.e. be turned over to the state.

"To Vanguard's credit, all individual accounts were made whole after the defendant's crimes were detected," the U.S. attorney's team notes.

Federal prosecutor David Ignall revealed last week that Vanguard and the Feds found out about the scheme when Tobin voluntarily reported it, the Inquirer reports. (According to the Inquirer, Tobin is expected to be released from prison next month.) The FBI, the USPS Inspection Services, and the IRS all investigated the case. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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