Timothy Wadsworth sentenced to 51 months for pandemic-era fraud scheme

Timothy Wadsworth, a 35-year-old from Rochester, New York, is headed to federal prison for 51 months. He ran a series of fraud schemes that left victims and government programs with more than $2 million in losses. US District Judge Frank P. Geraci, Jr. handed down the sentence on October 23, 2026. A fraud buffet, March 2020 to September 2021 The sentencing followed a guilty plea Wadsworth entered in May 2026. He admitted to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. The schemes ran from March 2020 through September 2021. The largest piece involved stolen card activity. Wadsworth’s operation pushed unauthorized credit card transactions through a Stripe merchant account. Between March 10 and May 15, 2020, there were 310 unauthorized credit-card payment attempts. Those attempts added up to $1,673,578. Not all of them went through. Only 116 transactions succeeded, and those produced $730,728.22 in losses. The card scheme was only one track. Wadsworth also filed fraudulent applications for Economic Injury Disaster Loans, known as EIDL, which brought in $161,200. He went after the Paycheck Protection Program too. Those PPP loans yielded approximately $41,000. Unempl...