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SOUTH BEND, Ind. — REAL News Michiana has learned the FBI arrested well-known anti-police “activist” John Winston Jr., 55, in connection to a nationwide bank fraud scheme earlier this week. U.S. Marshals took Winston Jr. into custody in South Bend on Monday.
The criminal complaint describing exact details about the fraudulent scheme is currently sealed from public view, however, charging documents shed some light on the scam in which Winston Jr. and 17 others are being charged with Bank Fraud and Money Laundering out of Iowa.
According to the indictment, Winston Jr. and his co-conspirators were somehow stealing checks that were being issued to several businesses. Winston Jr. and others would then file paperwork with the Iowa Secretary of State’s Office, creating fake companies with identical or similar names to the companies that were the intended recipients of the stolen checks. Winston Jr. and others would then create bank accounts at various banks throughout the country in the names of those businesses where they would deposit the checks they had stolen. Winston Jr. cashed checks into fraudulent accounts for amounts as much as $479,000.
According to charging documents, the scheme started as early as 2021 and lasted until earlier this year. The 20-page indictment can be read in its entirety below.
Winston Jr., known locally as “JDubb” or “Jay Dubb”, has been a vocal anti-police activist since at least 2016 when he used the media to criticize how local police interact with the homeless. Winston Jr. had created a group at the time to “help the homeless” and had been featured in multiple local news stories promoting his scam efforts, which included the creation of a tent city outside of a local church. Several former homeless people who lived in the “tent city” have accused associates of Winston Jr. of charging them rent in the form of food stamps during their stay on the property.
Winston Jr. gained a national audience for his anti-police activism in 2019, following an incident in which a South Bend Police Officer shot and killed a man who lunged at the officer with a knife. Despite being a justified shooting, the incident garnered national media attention, as Black Lives Matter and other organizations descended onto the city to protest “police brutality”. The media circus was fueled but then Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was making a primary campaign push for the Democrat nomination for President of the United States.
In his “activism”, Winston Jr. has worked with the Latin Kings street gang, Black Lives Matter and activist/convicted felon Vernado Malone, who was caught up in a scheme in which he was taking and sharing nude photos of dead bodies from a local funeral home.
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