Pennsylvania woman sentenced to 4 years after defrauding Cedar Rapids church of more than $400K

A Pennsylvania woman has been sentenced to four years in federal prison on multiple charges of laundering and fraud related to a fake email scheme that caused a Catholic church in Cedar Rapids to lose more than $400,000.

Margo Williams, 63, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, was convicted by a jury in September of one count of bank fraud, three counts of money laundering, three counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity, and one count of money laundering conspiracy.

According to trial evidence, St. Ludmila Catholic Church in Cedar Rapid paid $466,000 to a shell corporation set up by Williams, after receiving a fraudulent email that appeared to be from a construction company the church had hired to help with a $7 million renovation to its campus.

Williams laundered the money, along with money from four other victims — a hotel manager in Colorado, a large nonprofit in Washington state, a self-employed homebuilder in Montana, and a general commercial contractor in Pennsylvania — for a total of more than $800,000.

During the trial in September, Williams admitted to laundering the money, but claimed she had done so under the instructions of a romance scammer — someone who met and started a relationship with her online while pretending to be a famous British actor.

Along with her four-year prison sentence, Williams was ordered to pay $594,037.41 in restitution to her victims, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa. She also must serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term.

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