Copyright The Boston Globe
“They told us, basically, ‘We already sent it out, was that not correct?’” one of her sons said when reached by phone. It was not. Dutail, according to authorities, was a man named Shaka Stayman, a career criminal who had targeted the massive amount of unclaimed property in the state’s custody. He stole a total of $1.1 million in Massachusetts alone, prosecutors say, and attempted to take hundreds of thousands more. The scheme described by State Police investigators was audacious, involving forgery, impersonation, and a constellation of burner phones, mail-forwarding systems, and anonymous call services. He was arrested in August and is being held on high bail in Massachusetts after a judge arraigned him last Friday on new charges stemming from an indictment out of the Attorney General’s office. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges involving the unclaimed property division. These allegations are simply the latest chapter in a criminal history spanning two decades. Stayman, 44, has been accused of perpetrating schemes in different states, often including identity fraud, and multiple times targeting the dead, as is alleged the Rothschild case. His track record of success is mixed: He’s allegedly been part of plots involving the theft or attempted theft of millions of dollars and he’s lived large while free, but he’s also been caught multiple times and has spent years in state and federal custody. He has pleaded guilty to fraud or related charges multiple times, and, according to the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, more than a dozen states have reached out to ask about him since the latest set of charges was filed here in August. Dozens of pages of documents filed in state and federal court since 2012 paint Stayman as a digital-era version of a classic conman. He even seemed to identify himself that way, registering an email he used in one racket as “Frank Abagnale” — the fraudster-turned-author played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie “Catch Me If You Can.” But instead of handshakes and charming smiles, his tools are account passwords, virtual mailboxes, and difficult-to-trace messaging apps. “The online world opens up a lot for people,” said lawyer Robert Fisher, who focused on fraud as a federal prosecutor and still does as a defense attorney at Nixon Peabody. “Assume everything’s a scam online, unfortunately.” On Friday, Stayman appeared in a busy downtown courtroom after being indicted on 25 charges including money laundering and theft. Stayman, a short, middle-aged Black man with gray in his thick beard, pleaded “not guilty” to each charge, but said little else. “The defendant over the course of this fraud scheme consistently showed the ability to impersonate other individuals,” Assistant Attorney General Shane O’Sullivan said. He asked for bail to be set at $2 million. Judge James Budreau agreed, saying the defendant was a flight risk because of the money he likely could access. Stayman was funding a luxurious lifestyle; he had a condo in Atlanta and a Porsche. Stayman appeared to be moving out when he was arrested; he’d sold the condo for more than $2 million, which, along with the sports car, has been seized. “They’re able to live the high life for a short time,” said Anthony Amore, a longtime Boston-area security expert who’s written a book about fraud. “They get these short term successes.” “But conmen rarely die rich.” Born in 1981, Stayman was a quiet, bookish kid. One of his lawyers once wrote in a court filing that he had his struggles in his youth: His father wasn’t in the picture, and Stayman suffered from juvenile arthritis. He grew up in a “warm and loving household” run by his mother. “He is diminutive in statute, somewhat shy, but gregarious and warm once he is comfortable in his surroundings,” the lawyer wrote. “He thrives on learning and is an avid reader. Stayman is fundamentally a family man and without question has the love and support of his family.” His first arrest came sometime before 2007 on what prosecutors called a “less sophisticated” fraud case. He received a sentence of probation. “Clearly, that ‘wake-up call’ did not have the needed effect on the defendant’s behavior, but instead prompted him to engage in more sophisticated schemes, enabling him to elude detection and prosecution for years,” a prosecutor wrote after his first arrest on federal charges years later. In 2007, Stayman and several others began one of those schemes. They obtained personal financial account information through a middleman, who’d received it from an “insider.” Through phone calls, faxes, and emails to financial institutions, they accessed accounts and drained them. They chose targets carefully: a woman living in another country, a man who had become mentally incapacitated, some who were dead. After several years, federal authorities filed charges against him in April 2012 in both New York and North Carolina. The following year, he pleaded guilty to both sets of charges at once. “Clearly, the defendant’s motivation in committing his crimes was not merely survival but also greed,” a prosecutor wrote in a sentencing memorandum in 2014. His lawyer said he’d been held for more than two years as the case moved along. “His remorse is deep and genuine,” his defense attorney wrote. “He is determined to prove to himself and to his family that he is worthy of their love and support. He will not disappoint again.” A judge sentenced him to seven years in federal prison, including the time he’d already served. In prison, he found someone with shared interests: Matthew Crupi, who was doing time following a 2015 guilty plea for what was essentially a Ponzi scheme. Crupi had started what was ostensibly a real-estate company, but simply used it to persuade investors to give him millions with the promise of large returns, and then used new investments to pay off the original ones. After Stayman and Crupi both were released in 2018, “the two stayed in touch,” according to court documents. Stayman recruited Crupi to work with him, and they eventually admitted to collaborating on various schemes, including credit-card fraud and plots targeting dormant financial accounts. In 2022, Atlanta police arrested Stayman after authorities noticed fraudulent activity with his account. He was charged with using stolen identities to swindle $706,000 from a family trust. Those state charges led to federal ones in Alabama. Stayman was released on unsecured bond that December. According to authorities, he’d already begun making moves on his next target: the unclaimed property division in Massachusetts. Starting in September 2023, Stayman, aided by a 67-year-old bail bondsman from Georgia named Dwight Tucker, allegedly began submitting false claims to the Massachusetts treasurer’s office for unclaimed property, which holds the contents of accounts and safe-deposit boxes that have not been accessed in more than three years. Tucker has pleaded not guilty to charges filed following his arrest in August, and is scheduled to be arraigned on an indictment later this week. In Massachusetts, there’s an online portal for doing so, meant to be easily accessible and searchable. Generally, a person seeking to claim property this way must provide photo identification, a signature, a social security number, and some documentation proving they have an appropriate link to the property. Stayman “carefully and meticulously” forged documents in each instance, according to authorities. Police investigators wrote that he used various email addresses and mail-forwarding services, as well as messaging applications and prepaid phones. The treasurer’s office said it has a system for flagging suspicious UCP claims. It’s meant to note whether an email’s newly created or particularly long, an IP address is from a different state, or the same computer has been used to file multiple claims for different people’s property. Each of those adds some points to a claim, and if the total is high enough, it gets a red flag. In this case, the treasurer’s office audit found these issues and alerted its state police detachment. Prosecutors said they’ve spoken with authorities in other states including Nebraska, Michigan, Delaware, and Vermont about similar possible schemes by Stayman. He is due to be sentenced for the Alabama case in December. “He is going to go to prison,” his attorney Daniel Reilly said in court on Friday. “He is aware of that. He is not trying to avoid that.”
