Charles Scoville indicted for wire and tax fraud
Charles Scoville, the incarcerated creator of Traffic Monsoon, has been indicted on wire and tax fraud charges.
As first reported by Tara Talks, Scoville (right) was indicted via Grand Jury on four counts of fraud.
Per his August 5th indictment, Scoville
failed to report or pay taxes on more than $45 million in business income in the years 2014 through 2016.
The income in question was from Traffic Monsoon, describes Traffic Monsoon as “online scheme” that “used new investor money to pay old investors”.
This is in line with the SEC’s civil case, which alleges Traffic Monsoon was a $207 million dollar Ponzi scheme.
For the years 2014 and 2015 respectively, Traffic Monsoon declared $47,915 and $2,426,749 in business income.
The indictment pegs Traffic Monsoon’s actual income for 2014 and 2015 at over $138,425 and $47.6 million.
This led to respective tax losses of $31,456 and $19,377,632 in tax revenue for the United States.
Scoville’s indictment details two counts of wire and tax fraud (four counts in total).
The tax fraud charges relate to improper business income reporting as detailed above.
The wire fraud charges pertain to false statements Scoville made in relation to Traffic Monsoon’s business model on the company’s website.
In a nutshell representing Traffic Monsoon was a legitimate business, when in fact it was nothing more than an adcredit Ponzi.
Since Scoville’s indictment on August 5th there have been no further entries on the case docket. Stay tuned for updates as we continue to monitor the case.
We’re also continuing to monitor the SEC’s civil Traffic Monsoon case, in which Scoville is a defendant.
Scoville was incarcerated in 2018 on charges relating to child abuse. Scoville pled guilty to attempted child sexual abuse in November 2018.
I believe Scoville was sentenced in early 2019. Details of his plea agreement and sentencing however have never been made public.
Via SEC court filings we know that as of February 2020 Scoville was still in prison. Whether he’s since been released is unclear.
Update 28th September 2020 – As per comment #1 below, Scoville is still being held in Utah State Prison.
Update 28th August 2023 – Scoville’s wire and tax fraud indictment has been dismissed.
Still in the Utah State Prison with no parole date yet.
prnt.sc/uotmch
If I understand what I read on the website of a Utah criminal defence attorney correctly, attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child, to which he pled guilty, carries a minimum sentence of three years. (The original charge was the offence without the “attempted” part, which carries a minimum of 15 years.)
So if he was sentenced to only that minimum, and the time served since his arrest in June 2018 was taken into account, without parole he should be in prison until at least June 2021.
I went to the inmate locator before publishing this article (bop.gov/inmateloc/). When I punch in “Charles Scoville” I get an old result and nothing for “Charles David Scoville”.
Is Utah State Prison not included in the results, like how Pacer doesn’t include state-level cases?
edit: Actually I suppose that makes sense, same reason I can’t see the 2018 case on Pacer.
I’ll keep that in mind, if the case doesn’t show up on Pacer I can’t use BOP search.
This is just half of his problem with the IRS. He also failed to file proper personal tax on the income he took personally.
He is on record saying he was paid over $80 Million but didn’t think that was the right thing to do so he was going to give some of it back to the members.
It will be interesting to see how long before the IRS goes after him for his failure to file his personal income earnings on his tax forms.