{"id":267273,"date":"2026-05-11T22:58:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/267273\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T22:58:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:58:23","slug":"19-year-old-canadian-indicted-for-role-in-13-million-fraud-in-miami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/267273\/","title":{"rendered":"19-year-old Canadian indicted for role in $13 million fraud in Miami"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0May 11, 2026 at 6:40 PM<\/p>\n<p>lead-art-block.fullscreen-enterExpand<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/NGR3GCUQHBEYRFMK76FG7RGGVA.jpeg\"  width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">MIAMI \u2014 A 19-year-old Canadian stands accused of participating in a $13 million fraud that allowed him to \u201clease luxury vehicles, purchase high-end jewelry, and finance an extravagant nightlife and entertainment lifestyle\u201d in Miami, according to federal prosecutors. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida indicted Trenton Richard David Johnston and his 28-year-old friend Brandon Michael Tardibone for a cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering scheme, prosecutors <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-sdfl\/pr\/canadian-illegal-alien-and-co-conspirator-charged-13-million-cryptocurrency-fraud\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-sdfl\/pr\/canadian-illegal-alien-and-co-conspirator-charged-13-million-cryptocurrency-fraud\">announced<\/a> on Monday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Johnston, who overstayed his visa, \u201cimpersonated support representatives from a popular search engine and cryptocurrency-related companies to gain unauthorized access to victims\u2019 digital accounts and cryptocurrency wallets,\u201d according to prosecutors. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Federal agents accused Johnston and Tardibone of also using \u201ca series of financial transactions\u201d to hide the nature of the stolen funds, according to prosecutors. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Johnston faces charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Tardibone faces charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and harboring an alien in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Homeland Security Investigations Miami investigated the case, with the help of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General, Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Golden Beach Police Department.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Andrea Torres\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/https:\/\/author-service-images-sandbox-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/83a8effa-fc87-4940-96.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Andrea Torres<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">The Emmy Award-winning journalist joined the Local 10 News team in 2013. She wrote for the Miami Herald for more than 9 years and won a Green Eyeshade Award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0May 11, 2026 at 6:40 PM lead-art-block.fullscreen-enterExpand MIAMI \u2014 A 19-year-old Canadian stands accused of participating in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-267273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}