Source: Office of United States Attorneys
Defendant abused role as credit card custodian to embezzle money he then failed to report on his income taxes
Tacoma – A 48-year-old Olympia resident pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to wire fraud in connection with his scheme to steal nearly $900,000 from his former employer – the State of Washington – announced Acting U.S. Attorney Teal Luthy Miller. Matthew Randall Ping pleaded guilty to wire fraud and making and subscribing a false tax return. Ping is scheduled for sentencing by U.S. District Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright on September 9, 2025.
According to the charging information and the plea agreement, Ping began working for the Washington State Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) in 2009. By 2017 he had been promoted to the role of Management Analyst and served as the department’s credit card custodian. Between 2019 and 2023, Ping used a sophisticated scheme to abuse his credit card access so he could embezzle at least $878,115 from the state agency.
The plea agreement and charging information detail how Ping hid the fraud from his employer. Ping opened accounts with payment processors and gave the accounts display names that indicated the accounts were associated with legitimate OAH business vendors. Between 2019 and 2021, Ping secretly charged more than $330,000 to OAH credit cards as purported payments to these vendors. In fact, the money went to accounts Ping controlled. In 2021, Ping set up an account via a different payment processor and continued the fraud, stealing approximately $530,000 in additional funds from OAH. Ping also used OAH credit cards to buy $17,359 in personal items from Verizon and Walmart.
Ping also circumvented state procedures designed to detect credit card fraud. For example, OAH required that Ping’s co-workers review and approve Ping’s credit card transactions, but Ping would provide false or incomplete lists of transactions during that review process. After the review, Ping would add in his fraudulent charges and upload and approve payment himself without the required oversight on his fraudulent transactions. He also took steps to manipulate the accounting data to make it more difficult to determine that he had violated protocol by uploading, reviewing, and approving his own transactions
In all Ping secretly executed 210 transactions with the phony vendors he created for a total loss to the state of $860,756. The improper charges on his state issued credit card total $17,359, bringing the total loss to the State of Washington to $878,115.
The embezzlement was first discovered by the Washington State Auditor’s Office. Ping resigned his position in 2023 when the theft was discovered.
Even as he was embezzling, Ping failed to report the stolen funds on his income tax returns. For tax years 2020-2023, the resulting tax loss totals $240,247. Ping has agreed to pay full restitution to the state and to the IRS for his tax obligation.
The FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) worked with the Auditors Office on the criminal investigation.
The case is being Prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Dane A. Westermeyer.