Fraudster Pleads Guilty

Vanessa Roberts Avery, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that JOHN VOLOSHIN, also known as “Josh Thomas,” 68, formerly of New Haven and Woodbridge, pleaded guilty today in Hartford federal court to fraud and identity theft offenses.

According to court documents and statements made in court, in May 2012, Voloshin was sentenced in Hartford federal court to 33 months of imprisonment and three years of supervised release for operating multiple fraud schemes that caused losses of more than $1.5 million to individuals and lenders.  He was released from prison in May 2014.  In November 2014, he was sentenced to an additional nine months of imprisonment for violating the terms and conditions of his federal supervised release for repeatedly lying to his supervising probation officer by concocting a bogus job for a real estate concern in London.  He was released from prison in June 2015.  In the fall of 2015, Voloshin engaged in another fraud scheme by soliciting money from individuals and falsely representing that the money would be fully invested to generate very high returns.  In November 2017, he was sentenced to 27 months of imprisonment for the offense and for violating his supervised release.  He was also ordered to pay $275,000 in restitution, in addition to his restitution obligation from his 2012 conviction.  He was released from prison in May 2018.

Between January and April 2019, Voloshin defrauded a company in Bloomfield that provided accounting and tax preparation services to individuals and companies.  Voloshin stole blank checks for both the company’s business account and the company owner’s personal account, forged the owner’s name on the checks, and negotiated the checks for his own benefit.  Voloshin also stole and negotiated checks and money orders that were written out as payment by third parties to the company.  As part of the scheme, Voloshin incorporated an entity in Wyoming with a name very similar to that of the company, opened a bank account in the name of the sham company, deposited misappropriated checks into the account, and used the stolen funds for his own benefit.  Through this scheme, Voloshin defrauded victims of $56,548.71.

On September 23, 2020, a federal grand jury in New Haven returned an indictment charging Voloshin.  He was arrested on July 14, 2021, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and has been detained since his arrest.

Voloshin pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud, which carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 30 years, and one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory term of imprisonment of two years.  He is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny on August 22.

This matter is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with the assistance of the Bloomfield Police Department.  The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys David T. Huang and Sean P. Mahard.

U.S. Attorney Avery thanked Interpol and Brazilian authorities for their assistance in apprehending Voloshin, and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs for coordinating the extradition proceedings in this matter.