Rithy Ham

Introduction

Rithy Ham, a 45-year-old man from Vancouver, Washington, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering for orchestrating a yearslong scheme that defrauded a Portland resident of more than $333,000 — much of it the victim’s retirement savings. According to court documents, between September 2020 and May 2024 Ham created fictitious personas of two women and used them to deceive an adult victim, spinning stories of living expenses, nursing school tuition, and desperate escapes from prostitution and sex trafficking that moved the victim to send money again and again. The plea, announced November 4, 2026, carries a restitution obligation for the full loss of $333,249.52.

Background Information

The scheme ran for nearly four years on invented people. Ham fabricated two women — complete personas through which he communicated with the victim, sometimes directly and sometimes through the fabricated identities — and built the deception on emergencies only money could solve: the women needed help with living expenses, with nursing school tuition, and, most urgently, with escaping prostitution and sex trafficking. Believing the women were real and in danger, the victim sent money on multiple occasions. The architecture is textbook romance fraud, with one deliberate complication: by splitting the deception across two personas and playing them against each other, Ham kept the victim supporting two endangered lives at once for four consecutive years.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Pleaded guilty; sentencing pending. Ham pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, admitting the factual basis and agreeing to full restitution.

The court documents preserve the specific asks that moved the money. In November 2022, Ham falsely claimed that one of the fictitious women urgently needed funds to escape sex trafficking, leading the victim to transfer $36,872.35 — money Ham later used in part to write an $18,500 check to his wife. In March 2023, additional misrepresentations led the victim to transfer $20,922 from a retirement account, funds that went into accounts controlled by Ham and his wife. The individual transfers tell the larger story: in total, Ham stole $333,249.52 from the victim, much of it drawn from retirement savings the victim had set aside for the years when earning would end.

Ham pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison, and one count of money laundering, which carries up to 10 years; both counts also carry potential fines, up to three years of supervised release, and mandatory fee assessments. Under the plea agreement he acknowledged the factual basis of the charges and agreed to pay full restitution, and he additionally agreed to a forfeiture money judgment of $333,249.52 — the entire loss returned to the judgment’s center. The case was investigated by the FBI and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith Bateman, with the plea announced by U.S. Attorney Scott E. Bradford’s office for the District of Oregon.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The plea arrives amid a national surge in romance-fraud prosecutions, a category the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center consistently ranks among the costliest per-victim fraud types because a single scheme can run for years against a single person. Ham’s case is an extreme instance of that economics: one victim, four years, $333,249.52. The money-laundering count — grounded in proceeds moved through accounts controlled by Ham and his wife, including the $18,500 check — shows prosecutors charging the concealment layer as well as the deception, and the agreed forfeiture money judgment equal to the full loss puts the entire amount at the center of the judgment rather than leaving restitution to be chased afterward.

Current Status

Ham, 45, has pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing, where he faces up to 20 years on the wire-fraud count and 10 on the money-laundering count, with supervised release and fines available on both. The plea agreement’s restitution and forfeiture obligations — $333,249.52 in each form — are fixed, and the admission of the factual basis forecloses relitigating the scheme’s mechanics: the two invented women, the trafficking-escape emergencies, the retirement-account transfers, and the flow of proceeds into accounts he and his wife controlled. No sentencing date appears in the announcement.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A guilty plea to wire fraud and money laundering with a third-of-a-million-dollar admitted loss gives Ham a federal fraud record and a sentencing hearing that will weigh four years of sustained deception of a single victim. The victim’s loss — much of it retirement savings extracted through invented emergencies — is the kind the sentencing guidelines score heavily, and the restitution and forfeiture obligations will attach to Ham’s finances well beyond whatever custody term Judge imposes. At 45, the conviction closes the chapter that began in September 2020 with a fictitious woman and a story about needing help, and opens one measured in years of federal supervised release with restitution still owed.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Oregon, “Washington Man Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud and Money Laundering After Defrauding Victim of More Than $330,000,” November 4, 2026. source