Social Media 'God Squad' Fraudster Pleads Guilty

Darrin Hopkins, one of three men who ran the so-called “God Squad” social media group that deceived high school students to steal hundreds of thousands from credit unions and a bank in Oregon and Southwest Washington, will be sentenced in September after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

In U.S. District Court in Portland, Ore., on June 13, Hopkins, 22, admitted that he and two other men, Tyrann Chambers, 21 and Jaidan O’Neal, targeted students at Grant High School in Portland to deposit more than $150,000 in counterfeit checks at branches of the $1.4 billion Advantis Credit Union in Clackamas, Ore., the $871 million Rivermark Community Credit Union in Beaverton, Ore., the $24 billion Pentagon Federal Credit Union in McLean, Va., the $1.6 billion SELCO Community Credit Union in Eugene, Ore., the $1.1 billion IQ Credit Union in Vancouver, Wash., the $5.6 billion OnPoint Community Credit Union in Portland, Ore. and U.S. Bank.

Chambers and O’Neal have pleaded not guilty to bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Their jury trials are scheduled for August.

To entice the high school students, Hopkins, Chambers and O’Neal posted Snapchat and Instagram images of money, fancy cars, and promised big bucks in exchange for depositing phony checks.

They allegedly had high schoolers open accounts at the credit unions or bank, and in other instances, they recruited students who had accounts at the financial institutions.

Throughout 2017 and last year, Hopkins, Chambers and O’Neal drove students to the financial institutions to deposit the rubber checks and provided them with instructions on how to make the deposits, how much cash to withdraw, and how to answer credit union and bank employees who asked questions, according to the criminal complaint.

The amounts on the checks ranged from $600 to $3,500.

Hopkins, Chambers and O’Neal used the students’ IDs, ATM cards and PIN numbers so the counterfeit checks could be made payable to the students and deposited into their accounts. The men then withdrew cash from the ATMs or made point-of-sale purchases with cash withdrawals at commercial businesses throughout Oregon and Southwest Washington.

The high school students were not charged with any crimes because they were duped into believing the transactions were legitimate. Hopkins, Chambers and O’Neal told high schoolers they worked for a company that held inactive investments and accounts, and in order to liquidate the assets or avoid a tax liability, the fake checks needed to be deposited into the students’ accounts.