US Marshals TRACK Ghost Payroll Fugitive 19 Months — $29M DoD Fraud Exposed at Tampa Marina

US Marshals and IRS tracked a Defense contractor fugitive for 19 months across 6 states — and found him on a sailboat in Tampa. Inside the $29M ghost payroll scheme that created 340 fictitious DoD employees — and why it ran undetected for 34 months. Raymond Vaszk. Harbour Island Marina. June 18, 2026. IRS Criminal Investigation case file. Raymond Tibor Vaszk spent 19 months on the run after engineering a ghost employee payroll fraud worth $29 million inside a Norfolk defense logistics contractor. He burned two identities, surfaced briefly in Scottsdale, and used a cash job at a Phoenix data recovery firm to help a separate client alter financial records. The breakthrough came from a single cash-purchase pattern at a Tampa marine supply store — amounts just under $900, repeated over 11 weeks. US Marshals arrested Vaszk aboard a 38-foot ketch at Harbour Island Marina on June 18, 2026. Recovered from the vessel: a laptop still running payroll manipulation scripts against a decommissioned DoD server. $15.1 million remains unaccounted for.