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Designer Linda Martinez scammed two co-directors of Marti Prive Inc., a Route 80 womens’ apparel manufacturer, between May 2009 and December of last year, the indictment returned Monday says.
It says she forged invoices to the company in the names of foreign businesses and failed to make debt payments “dealing with the money as if her own.”
Martinez has remained free on $75,000 bail since being arrested at her sister’s house in Clifton on Dec. 28 last year, a few days after she returned to New Jersey from Colombia, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said at the time.
Martinez created Marti Prive International LLC four years ago with Kenneth Zuckerberg of Woodcliff Lake and Thomas Costabile of Old Tappan. The company said it was created to sell one-of-a-kind red-carpet dresses for musical artists & entertainers, along with lingerie, swimwear and nightwear.
Her partners told investigators they gave Martinez $400,000 in 2009 to set up and operate a clothing factory in Colombia but didn’t get any finished products in return.
Instead, detectives from Molinelli’s White Collar Crimes Unit found that Martinez “produced fake invoices to account for the missing company funds,” the prosecutor said.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR
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