The crackdown on corporate fraud has continued with the recent indictment unsealed in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, charging Anthony Tepedino, C.E.O. of Allstate Sales Group, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The indictment is another case in the global shift from regulatory enforcement to criminal charges and executive prosecutions as law enforcement continues to ratchet up the heat on financial crime.

1. Introduction

On December 11, 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, in Manhattan announced the unsealing of an indictment charging Anthony Tepedino, C.E.O. of Allstate Sales Group, with commercial fraud, aggravated identity theft and attempted witness tampering. In a related press release, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton alleged that Mr. Tepedino “turned a major construction company into his personal cash machine, stealing from companies that serve New Yorkers, bribing insiders, and lying to banks to keep the scheme alive.” (here) Reporting for MSN, business journalist, Noloy Chakrabarti, said Allstate Sales Group rapidly developed a reputation as one of the emerging construction vendors in the United States, securing major wireless infrastructure contracts with industry giants such as Verizon and AT&T, only to collapse when the carefully orchestrated fraud scheme on which it was built was exposed. (here)

2. The Indictment

The indictment alleges that from 2018 to 2024, Mr. Tepedino, C.E.O. of the telecommunications construction and engineering company “engaged in a series of schemes” to defraud the company’s largest customer (identified as the “Victim Company”), the company’s largest creditor (identified as the “Victim Bank”) and the construction company itself. To carry out the schemes, Mr. Tepedino and others “formed shell companies, created fake invoices, and looted the Construction Company of more than $5 million.” Mr. Tepedino used the embezzled funds to bribe an employee of the Victim Company and to make millions of dollars in payments to himself, his relatives and his creditors. (here)

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the construction company experienced cash flow problems and significant year-to-year volatility in its profitability. At the same time, it earned hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and employed more than 500 people at its peak. The indictment asserts that Mr. Tepedino abused his position and disregarded the interests of his employees and the company’s creditors “to fund his lavish lifestyle and to commit commercial bribery, bank fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.” Here are the key allegations that I have taken from the indictment:

• First, ANTHONY TEPEDINO, the defendant, stole more than $5 million from the Construction Company through a series of lies and false documents. TEPEDINO accomplished this fraud with the help of a co-conspirator (“CC-1”), who was an employee of the Construction Company. TEPEDINO and CC-1 conspired to submit false invoices to the Construction Company, in order to generate fraudulent payments to a non-operational shell company (“Shell Company-1) controlled by CC-1. To conceal their involvement in this scheme, TEPEDINO and CC-1 falsely claimed that Shell Company-1 was owned by a third party (“Individual-1”) and had CC-1 impersonate Individual-1 when communicating with the Construction Company on behalf of Shell Company-1. (clause 3)
• Second, ANTHONY TEPEDINO, the defendant, used the money he stole from the Construction Company to fund more than $1 million in commercial bribe payments to a second co-conspirator (“CC-2”), who was a senior manager at the Victim Company. These bribe payments were made in exchange for CC-2 steering new contracts worth millions of dollars to the Construction Company, assigning work to the Construction Company, and approving invoices submitted by the Construction Company. (clause 4)
• Third, ANTHONY TEPEDINO, the defendant, defrauded the Victim Bank by causing it to issue more than $18 million in business credit and loans to the Construction Company using false and fraudulent information about the Construction Company’s payments to Shell Company-1, namely, that those payments were for bona fide business expenses. In truth, these payments were simply a means for TEPEDINO to steal from the Construction Company, to fund his bribe payments to CC-2, and to enrich himself and fund his own lavish lifestyle. TEPEDINO also committed fraud on the Victim Bank by fraudulently failing to disclose that the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Construction Company was earning from the Victim Company were procured in part through TEPEDINO’s bribery of CC-2. (clause 5)

To avoid being held accountable, the indictment claims Mr. Tepedino attempted to engage in witness tampering. After learning of the existence of a federal investigation into his conduct, he attempted to cause CC-1 and CC-2 to falsely claim that his embezzlement of corporate funds through Shell Company-1 was justified by invoices submitted by Shell Company-2, and that Tepedino’s bribe payments to CC-2 were in exchange for legitimate consulting services.

In a piece published by Hoodline on December 12, 2025, Damon Caldwell described the indictment and Mr. Tepedino’s arrest as “mark[ing] a momentous escalation in the fight against corporate corruption by federal authorities.” (here) The charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services wire fraud, bank fraud and witness tampering carry potential maximum sentences ranging from 20 to 30 years. In the report for MSN, Mr. Chakrabarti said the indictment revealed that the collapse of Allstate Sales Group “was not due to a liquidity crisis but was instead the result of a deliberate, long-running fraud that had metastasised over more than five years.” Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize, as with any indictment discussed in posts to On The Wire, that Mr. Tepedino is presumed innocent as the allegations have not been proved in a court of law.

3. Conclusion

In an article titled From Boardrooms to Blacklists: The Global Crackdown on Corporate Fraudsters published by Newstrail on December 3, 2025, Anton Stravinsky argued that corporate fraud is no longer being treated as a matter for regulators and internal auditors. “The result is a visible shift from quiet settlements and modest fines toward criminal charges, executive prosecutions, cross-border asset seizures, and long-running investigations that follow money from boardrooms to offshore structures and digital wallets,” he said. (here) Mr. Stravinsky went on to identify policy and enforcement trends defining the current era of corporate fraud crackdown. First, there is a renewed emphasis on individual accountability. Second, enforcement bodies are increasingly comfortable with hefty, highly public penalties. Third, international cooperation has deepened. Fourth, asset tracing and recovery are taking centre stage. “The global crackdown on corporate fraudsters is not a temporary campaign,” he said. “Structural factors, including public anger over inequality, repeated financial scandals, and concerns about the integrity of markets, have made aggressive enforcement politically and institutionally durable.”