A Boston woman was sentenced last week in federal court in Boston for her role in a scheme to embezzle more than $2.7 million from Bank of America using fraudulent donations to nonprofit organizations.
Brianna Alexis Forde, 36, was sentenced to four months in prison and two years of supervised release, including six months of home detention. She was also ordered to pay $778,000 in restitution.
Forde was indicted with co-conspirators Palestine Ace, 46, a former senior vice president of BofA’s Global Wealth & Investment Management Division, and her husband, Jonathan R. Ace, 46, in May 2017. She pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in November 2018.
The defendants engaged in an embezzlement and kickback scheme to defraud BofA of approximately $2.7 million using fraudulent donations to nonprofit organizations from approximately October 2010 to April 2015.
As part of the scheme, Palestine Ace used her position as a senior vice president at BofA to misappropriate funds from a marketing budget and transfer the money to nonprofit organizations.
Specifically, Palestine Ace authorized 75 transactions, each under $50,000, to nonprofit organizations in Boston and Atlanta. Then the defendants, either directly or indirectly, informed the nonprofit organizations that a substantial portion of the donated funds must be returned in order to ensure that BofA would continue to fund the organization.
The nonprofit organizations either wrote a check to Jonathan Ace or Forde, or they returned funds to a BofA account, to which the defendants had access. On various occasions, Jonathan Ace pressured the recipients of the donated funds to return a higher percentage of the funds to him, by using intimidation and threats of public humiliation.
Palestine and Jonathan Ace used a portion of the funds they embezzled from BofA to support their lifestyle and pay for personal expenses, including lavish birthday parties and the purchase of a $17,000 Kawasaki motorcycle. Forde personally received over $200,000 for her role in the scheme.
Palestine Ace plead guilty in February 2018 to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, five counts of wire fraud, and 12 counts of bank fraud, and was sentenced on Nov. 14, 2018, to one year and one day in prison, two years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of more than $2.7 million.
Jonathan Ace plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, three counts of wire fraud, and one count of engaging in an unlawful monetary transaction, and was sentenced on Nov. 15, 2018, to two years in prison, two years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of more than $1.8 million.
