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Feds Charge Englewood Business Consultant In $4 Million Bank Loan Fraud

An Englewood business consultant directed employees to pose as applicants, list fake jobs and artificially boost income information as part of a widespread conspiracy to illegally secure more than $4 million in bank loans, federal authorities charged.

FDIC-Office of the Inspector General

FDIC-Office of the Inspector General

Photo Credit: COURTESY: FDIC-OIG

As funding director for Cash Flow Partners, a business consulting firm in Saddle Brook, Jennie Frias, 36, had employees “pose as loan applicants when communicating with the victim banks,” U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said Friday.

Cash Flow published online ads and held seminars offering customers help in obtaining FDIC-insured bank loans, Carpenito said.

“Frias and others created false documentation to make customers’ loan applications appear more financially viable than they actually were,” the U.S. attorney said.

The conspirators “falsified payroll records by including fictitious financial and employment information, such as fake jobs, on template payroll forms and IRS tax forms,” Carpenito said.

Then, he said, they “took steps to pose as the loan applicants when communicating with the victim banks.

“For example, [the] employees remotely controlled computers located at the homes of the loan applicants to submit documents to the banks…and [took possession of the loan applicants’ cell phones and communicated with the banks posing as the loan applicants].”

One of Frias’s conspirators, Raymundo Torres, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Newark on Tuesday for his role in the Cash Flow bank fraud conspiracy.

The following day, a federal judge released Frias – also known as Jennie Castillo -- on $100,000 unsecured bond pending further court action.

Anyone who may have information about the case is asked to contact the FBI: 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324).

Carpenito credited the bureau and the FDIC-Office of the Inspector General (FDIC-OIG) with the investigation.

Handling the case for the government are Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ari B. Fontecchio of Carpenito’s Economic Crimes Unit and J. Stephen Ferketic of the his Opioids Unit in Newark.

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