Police on May 20 arrested a 33-year-old Canoga Park, Calif. man by warrant in connection with the theft of $1,272,500 from a New Canaan-based real estate investment company in 2024. The man is accused of hacking email accounts at the company and using them to fool a bank into wiring the money into his own account, according to the affidavit of New Canaan Police Office Thomas Patten that forms the major part of an arrest warrant application signed in October 2025 by state Superior Court judge Bruce Hudock. The company reported the fraud to police in March 2024, Patten said in the affidavit, after making “an investment into a real estate project in the metro Boston area.”
“The construction lender, Santander Bank, required [the company] to deposit $2,172,500 with the bank as a completion guaranty for hitting certain construction milestones,” the arrest warrant application said.
The company had started hitting those milestones in February 2024 “and they were to have $1,272,500 released back to their investor account at their Bankwell bank account at 156 Cherry Street in New Canaan,” but those funds never arrived, the application said. Company officials soon discovered that their emails had been hacked for some unknown period of time and were “being monitored by the perpetrator(s),” whose methodology included funneling emails related to the wire transfer into unopened folders in Microsoft Outlook while also using email accounts “to provide alternative wire instructions,” Patten said in the affidavit.
