Seattle Man Arunkumar Singal Sentenced to 14 Months in Prison for Wire Fraud

A Seattle, Washington man was sentenced last week to 14 months in prison for wire fraud. Last January, Arunkumar Singal, 42, pleaded guilty to defrauding his employer of nearly $800,000 in used equipment sales and setting up a shell company that bought and resold equipment at big personal profit.

Singal, a former manager of a medical device company in Snoqualmie, Washington, was sentenced on June 4. At the hearing, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones told Singal, “You put everything at risk for one thing: to add to your wealth….. You stopped because you were caught by law enforcement, but you continued to lie and deceive,” according to a Department of Justice press release.

The DOJ press release, citing records filed in the case, says that in 2014 Singal was the director of Global Product Support at Spacelabs Healthcare Inc., where he was in charge of a new initiative to resell used equipment. But instead of selling the equipment to the highest bidder as he was supposed to do, Singal devised a scheme that would turn profitable for him. He got a Texas company on board to bid on the equipment at a very low price. He used a shell company he himself created to purchase the equipment for a ten percent increase in profit to the Texas company. Singal then turned around and sold the equipment at a much higher price to a Minnesota company.  

As per the DOJ, Singal “made a profit of more than $780,000,” through his fraudulent scheme.  The then sued that money to pay down the mortgage on his luxury Mercer Island home and to buy a Tesla, among other expenditures.  

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Singal’s scheme unraveled when tech support workers doing regular maintenance on his company cell phone reported messages that appeared to indicate side deals not authorized by the company.  The company fired Singal and reported potential fraud to the Snoqualmie Police Department who alerted the FBI.As part of the plea deal, Singal sold the Mercer Island home and paid restitution to Spacelabs of $780,163. 

Singal is a citizen of India and will likely be deported following his prison term.