Former accountant laundered $5.3 million stolen from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta 5%
By WSBTV.com News Staff7%
7/23/2026, 9:50:20 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 4 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Fundamental Attribution Error, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 15.4% saturation with 38 hits. Analysis detected 131 faulty-reasoning hits from 246 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 20.6% and a BS Rank of 5% (20,123 of 21,176 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 95.00% of the article peer group.
A 66-year-old former Certified Public Accountant from Atlanta was sentenced yesterday to years in federal prison.
Ronald Deabler, of Atlanta, was convicted of conspiring to launder $5.3 million stolen from Children’s Health Care of Atlanta, Inc.
He was sentenced to four years in prison.
U.S.
Attorney Theodore S.
Hertzberg stated that Deabler leveraged his knowledge of the banking system to launder the millions of dollars.
The funds were stolen from a not-for-profit pediatric health care system dedicated to the welfare of Georgia’s infants, children and teens.
“Criminals who steal from a children’s hospital are not just committing financial fraud—they are exploiting an institution that exists to care for vulnerable children and support their families,” said Marlo Graham, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta.
Graham added that Deabler chose to use his financial expertise to hide and distribute the stolen money.
According to Hertzberg and information presented in court, a hacker accessed the email system of a commercial furniture vendor for Children’s Health Care of Atlanta (CHOA) in early June 2023.
Posing as a vendor employee, the unknown hacker contacted CHOA and updated the vendor’s bank account information on file for ACH payments.
On June 13, 2023, the provided bank account belonged to Deabler.
The hacker directed CHOA to wire the $5.3 million into Deabler’s bank account.
Deabler, who is also a business owner, agreed to distribute the stolen money in exchange for a commission.
Analysis
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