Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that SUNI MUNSHANI, the former Chief Executive Officer of a Connecticut-based technology company (the “Victim Company”), was sentenced to 42 months in prison for his participation in a scheme to defraud the Victim Company of millions of dollars. The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Suni Munshani believed that he could ransack a company that had put its trust in him. He lied for years — even impersonating his deceased uncle — to steal from an organization he was supposed to lead. His sentence shows once again that crime doesn’t pay, and that this Office will bring to justice those who flout the law, even if they have the top job.”
According to public court filings and statements made in Court:
Between 2011 and 2019, SUNI MUNSHANI was the CEO of the Victim Company, which provided data security services to its clients. Within six months of his appointment as CEO, MUNSHANI and others began an approximately eight-year scheme to defraud the Victim Company. During the scheme, MUNSHANI, among other things, created an email account in the name of his deceased uncle but controlled by MUNSHANI. MUNSHANI, posing as the uncle, used that email account to correspond with the Victim Company and to obtain payments from the Victim Company totaling at least approximately $3 million dollars for services that were never provided. These purported services were falsely represented to have been rendered by the uncle as well as others, including a marketing executive who had met MUNSHANI in social settings but had never worked for MUNSHANI or the Victim Company and had no idea his identity was being used by MUNSHANI. MUNSHANI also caused the Victim Company to issue a $3.5 million check for a purported tax liability, which check MUNSHANI then deposited into an unauthorized bank account created by MUNSHANI in the name of the Victim Company.
In addition, MUNSHANI defrauded the Victim Company through fraudulent licensing and reseller agreements between the Victim Company and two other companies (the “Licensing Company” and the “Reseller Company,” respectively). Among other things, MUNSHANI instructed another individual to set up the Reseller Company “in the same way as [the Licensing Company],” and then helped create and submit fraudulent invoices from the Reseller Company to the Victim Company.
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In addition to his prison term, MUNSHANI, 61, of Easton, Connecticut, was sentenced to three years of supervised release. The Court reserved decision on the amount of restitution.
Mr. Williams praised the outstanding investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York Office.
The prosecution of this case is being handled by the Office’s Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Timothy V. Capozzi and Steven J. Kochevar are in charge of the prosecution.
