A Louisiana man and his coconspirators recently sent fraudulent text messages to credit union members and bank customers, stealing more than $300,000 from their accounts in just two months.
Marvell Trevenski Jackson Jr., 26, of Baton Rouge is expected to be sentenced in July for the text fraud scheme, as well as for his involvement in the mail theft of business and personal checks totaling more than $500,000 over seven months.
Jackson pleaded guilty last month in federal court to one felony count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and one felony count of theft of mail, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in Baton Rouge.
Between April and May 2025, Jackson and unidentified coconspirators sent fraudulent text messages to members of Navy Federal Credit Union ($203.5 billion, Vienna, Va.), Essential Federal Credit Union ($429 million, Baton Rouge) and customers of First Guarantee Bank and Trust. According to court documents, one of the coconspirators was a U.S. Mail carrier of Denham Spring, La.
The text messages falsely reported unauthorized financial transactions and directed members and customers to provide login credentials and other confidential information needed to access their accounts.
In some instances, Jackson and others followed fraudulent text messages up with phone calls to members and customers to elicit personal and confidential information regarding their accounts by impersonating credit union and bank employees. Members of the conspiracy then used that information to transfer funds from victims' accounts to other accounts opened by money mules.
To conceal the fraud and evade detection, Jackson recruited and paid money mules to open bank accounts at Navy Federal, Essential and First Guarantee Bank and Trust to deposit the stolen funds, which were quickly withdrawn. Jackson used his Instagram account to promote the scheme and recruit money mules.
In addition, Jackson and his coconspirators stole business and personal checks from the U.S. Mail from July 2023 to February 2024, using them to glean personally identifiable information.
They altered the checks or created counterfeit versions, making them payable to money mules. In one case, an altered check for $60,000 was deposited in a Regions Bank in Baton Rouge. The funds were withdrawn before the bank identified the fraud, according to prosecutors.
In total, Jackson and his coconspirators obtained or sought to obtain more than $500,000 by negotiating and attempting to negotiate altered or counterfeit checks at financial institutions. However, the total amount of funds allegedly stolen through the check fraud scheme was not reported in court documents.
Peter Strozniak can be reached at peter.strozniak@arc-network.com.
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