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Sara Rong Liu, 52, has an appearance scheduled this afternoon in federal court in Newark, New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said.
The case is being prosecuted by the man nominated by Gov. Christie as Bergen County’s next prosecutor: Assistant U.S. Attorney Gurbir Grewal of Glen Rock.
According to a federal complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark, Liu lied to investors that Westone Inc. — a company purportedly involved in the wholesale distribution of textiles as well as interior design — was awarded a $156.6 million contract by the New York City Department of Design and Construction.
She then claimed that “there was a problem with the contract that required Westone to pay certain fees before the NYC DDC would release contract payments,” the complaint says.
To support her bogus claims, it says, Liu created several fictitious contracts, emails and other documents from, among others, the NYC DDC, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the U.S. Treasury Department, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, among others.
Liu emailed the documents to the “victim investors,” claiming the funds she needed from them were “short-term loans” that would be repaid as soon as the first contract payment was released, according to the federal complain.
The investors, in turn, gave Liu millions, the government contends.
One of them, in Virginia, gave her $530,000 over a year and a half, wiring the money into an account she controlled, the complaint says.
In another alleged scheme, Liu told victim investors that “she stood to receive more than $17 million from a deceased uncle’s estate in the PRC, but first had to pay taxes related to her uncle’s estate before she could receive the money,” it adds.
If they helped her to pay the taxes, “she would share the inheritance with them.”
Fishman credited special agents of the FBI and Treasury Department with making the case, presented by Grewal and Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Mendelsohn of the U.S. Attorney’s Economic Crimes Unit in Newark.
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