Credit-repair specialist pleads guilty to multimillion dollar fraud

SACRAMENTO
February 9, 2010 12:01am

Jerry Van Le, 30, of Stockton, has pleaded guilty to false statements in loan and credit applications, mail fraud, and wire fraud in connection with his credit-repair business.

For two years ending in 2008, Mr. Le worked with individuals throughout the Sacramento area creating fraudulent identities for himself and his customers in order to use these identities to establish fraudulent lines of credit with banks and credit union, credit card companies and car dealerships, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle Reardon, who is prosecuting the case.

Mr. Le used contacts within the finance industry to help in building fraudulent credit histories for the identities he developed so that when credit was sought using these identities, the credit bureaus would report that the applicant was a good credit risk based upon the bogus histories, prosecutors say.

Bogus pay slips, W-2 forms, letters from nonexistent employers, and fake California driver’s licenses were part of the multiples ruses for about 40 clients, some of which were then used to commit additional fraud.

The fraudulent lines of credit obtained by Mr. Le and his customers allowed the purchase in 2006 of a $378,000 home in Lincoln, as well as multiple high-end luxury cars from Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, and Range Rover. In addition, he obtained approximately $200,000 from multiple credit cards that he fraudulently acquired in his own or fictitious names. The total loss from the defendant’s own fraudulent activities, and the losses sustained as a result of the fraudulent credit applications submitted by the clients of his credit repair business were between $1.5 million and $2 million.

Mr. Le is scheduled to be sentenced on April. The maximum statutory penalty is 30 years in prison, a $1,000,000 fine, and five years of supervised release.

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