{"id":64409,"date":"2025-11-29T12:04:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T12:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/64409\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T12:04:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T12:04:31","slug":"former-tallahassee-man-pleads-guilty-in-fraud-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/64409\/","title":{"rendered":"FORMER TALLAHASSEE MAN PLEADS GUILTY IN FRAUD SCHEME"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA \u2013 John Kuhlmann, 78, of Daytona Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty in federal court to a charge of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. The plea was announced by John P. Heekin, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Attorney Heekin said: \u201cI applaud the outstanding investigative work of our state and federal law enforcement partners to identify and dismantle this fraud scheme. My office will to continue to aggressively prosecute fraudsters to hold them accountable for their crimes and to secure restitution for the victims they exploited.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Court documents reflect that beginning in November 2018, the defendant opened two corporations in Florida, \u201cSeminole Services, Inc.\u201d and \u201cQB Accounting Services,\u201d which purportedly were in business to provide computer technical support services. Neither business was registered as required by law as a money transmitting service. The investigation revealed the defendant opened the businesses in order to receive money from victims and then wired those funds to his co-conspirators who were located in foreign countries. The co-conspirators used a variety of tactics on victims\u2014including convincing them that their computers had been infected with viruses, had been hacked, or their financial information was otherwise at risk of being stolen\u2014to fraudulently convince them to pay as much as $150,000 for computer repair services. Over the course of his involvement in the fraud scheme, the defendant transferred approximately $3.5 million dollars in victim funds through his business bank accounts.<\/p>\n<p>Kuhlmann faces up to five years\u2019 imprisonment and three years of supervised release. He has agreed to pay over $1 million in restitution to the victims.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The case involved a joint investigation by the United States Secret Service, the United States Postal Inspection Service, and the Leon County Sheriff\u2019s Office. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Meredith L. Steer and Justin M. Keen.<\/p>\n<p>Sentencing is scheduled for December 18, 2025, at 3:00 pm at the United States Courthouse in Tallahassee before United States District Judge Mark Walker.<\/p>\n<p>If you or someone you know is age 60 or older and has experienced financial fraud, experienced professionals are standing by at the National Elder Fraud Hotline 1-833-FRAUD-11 (1-833-372-8311). This Justice Department hotline, managed by the Office for Victims of Crime, can provide personalized support to callers by assessing the needs of the victim and identifying relevant next steps. Case managers will identify appropriate reporting agencies, provide information to callers to assist them in reporting, connect callers directly with appropriate agencies and provide resources and referrals, on a case-by-case basis. Reporting is the first step. Reporting can help authorities identify those who commit fraud and reporting certain financial losses due to fraud as soon as possible can increase the likelihood of recovering losses. The hotline is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET. English, Spanish, and other languages are available.<\/p>\n<p>More information about the department\u2019s efforts to help American seniors is available at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.justice.gov\/elderjustice\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">www.justice.gov\/elderjustice<\/a>. For more information about the Consumer Protection Branch and its enforcement efforts visit\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.justice.gov\/civil\/consumer-protection-branch\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">www.justice.gov\/civil\/consumer-protection-branch<\/a>. Elder fraud complaints can be filed with the FTC at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reportfraud.ftc.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">www.reportfraud.ftc.gov\/<\/a>\u00a0or at 877-FTC-HELP. The Justice Department provides a variety of resources relating to elder fraud victimization through its Office for Victims of Crime, at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ovc.gov\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">www.ovc.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The United States Attorney\u2019s Office for the Northern District of Florida is one of 94 offices that serve as the nation\u2019s principal litigators under the direction of the Attorney General. To access public court documents online, please visit the<a href=\"https:\/\/ecf.flnd.uscourts.gov\/cgi-bin\/login.pl\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida<\/a> website. For more information about the United States Attorney\u2019s Office for the Northern District of Florida, visit\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao\/fln\/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao\/fln\/index.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\n  Legal Disclaimer:\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  EIN Presswire provides this news content &#8220;as is&#8221; without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability<br \/>\n  for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this<br \/>\n  article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.\n<\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"prtr\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764417871_751_article.gif\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"text-center\">You just read:<\/p>\n<p>News Provided By<\/p>\n<p>\n      November 29, 2025, 04:35 GMT\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n        <br \/>EIN Presswire&#8217;s priority is author transparency. We do our best to weed out false and misleading content. The content above is<br \/>\nthe sole responsibility of the author who makes it available. If you have any complaints, kindly contact the author above.\n      <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA \u2013 John Kuhlmann, 78, of Daytona Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty in federal court to a charge&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[29038,1387,3981,31100,2391,36683,1329,232,234,233],"class_list":["post-64409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-former","tag-fraud","tag-guilty","tag-in","tag-man","tag-pleads","tag-scheme","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64409","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=64409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}