ATLANTA — A 66-year-old former Certified Public Accountant from Atlanta was sentenced yesterday to years in federal prison.
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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.
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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.
Soon after the $5.3 million was deposited, Deabler opened a second bank account and tried to transfer the entire proceeds of the fraud.
When the bank prevented this, Deabler instead moved more than $1 million into the new account. He then converted approximately $3.5 million of the fraud proceeds into four cashier’s checks, which he mailed to individuals and entities as instructed by the hacker.
CHOA and its vendor detected the fraud within a few days of the fund transfer. CHOA notified its bank, which traced the funds to Deabler’s bank account.
Further tracing efforts led to the recovery of $4 million from Deabler’s accounts and the bank accounts that received Deabler’s cashier’s checks.
Deabler was found guilty by a jury on Feb. 12, 2026. Following his four-year prison sentence, Deabler will serve two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $682,860 in restitution.
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