While serving a 20-year Georgia state prison sentence, in 2019, Damon Thomas Young used a contraband cell phone to defraud, or attempt to defraud, multiple heavy equipment dealers out of equipment worth millions of dollars.
Using the alias Morgan Sylvia and pretending to be a purchasing officer with AbbVie, a real biopharmaceutical company, Young ordered heavy construction equipment that he had delivered in and around Ranger, Georgia, where he and his family lived. He then put the equipment up for sale to buyers on Craigslist, reports the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia.
To carry out his fraud, Young called heavy equipment dealers, posed as Morgan Sylvia, a fictitious purchasing officer, and stated that he wanted to order some heavy construction equipment. Using the Sylvia alias, Young misrepresented that AbbVie needed the equipment because it was building a facility in Ranger.
He ordered heavy equipment, such as wheel loaders, skid steer loaders, an excavator, a horizontal grinder, and dump trucks. Young communicated with the equipment dealers by phone, text, and email from prison. He fraudulently completed credit applications, purchase orders, sales contracts, and insurance documents and emailed them to the dealers as part of the scheme. He also emailed a fraudulent AbbVie corporate resolution document, purportedly signed by actual corporate officers of the company, but in truth he had forged the signatures on the…
