Former CPA Sentenced for Laundering Stolen Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Funds
A business email compromise (BEC) attack on a vendor of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in 2023 resulted in $5.3 million in funds being stolen. While it is unclear if the hacker has been identified and will face justice, a former certified public accountant who conspired with the hacker has been sentenced for attempting to launder the stolen funds.
The hacker compromised the email account of a vendor of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta that provided furniture and other supplies. On or around June 13, 2023, the hacker impersonated the vendor and requested a change to the vendor’s automatic clearinghouse electronic payment instructions. When the vendor was paid, the funds were directed to a bank account belonging to former CPA and Atlanta business owner Ronald Deabler, 66.
According to court documents, Deabler conspired with the hacker to distribute the stolen funds in exchange for a commission. Deabler opened a second account and tried to transfer the funds; however, the bank would not transfer the entire amount, and only around $1 million of the funds were transferred. Around $3.5 million of the funds obtained from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta were converted to cashiers’ checks, which were mailed out to a range of different entities and individuals at the direction of the hacker.
Fraudulent transfers are usually identified quickly when the intended recipient of the funds contacts their client to find out why the transfer has not been made. In this case, the vendor contacted Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta within a few days when the expected payment was not received. The fraudulent transfer was quickly identified and traced to Deabler.
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Deabler was convicted by a federal jury in February, and this month, a judge sentenced Deabler to four years in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay more than $682,000 in restitution. Around $4 million was recovered from Deabler’s accounts and the accounts that received the cashier’s checks.
“Deabler used his knowledge of the banking system to launder millions of dollars stolen from a not-for-profit pediatric healthcare system that is dedicated to the welfare of Georgia’s infants, children, and teens,” said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. “Scammers, swindlers, and thieves who target our vital healthcare institutions, and their associates who launder stolen money, will face the full consequences of their actions.”
BEC scams are among the costliest types of cybercrime, second only to investment fraud. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 24,768 BEC complaints about BEC attacks in 2025, with losses to the scams totaling more than $3.046 billion. In the past three years alone, more than $8.5 billion has been lost to BEC scams.
