New Jersey Businessman Goes to Prison for Defrauding an Atlanta Financing Company

ATLANTA – Samuel Perez, a New Jersey businessman, has been sentenced to three years, ten months in federal prison for falsifying over $6 million in accounts receivables and invoices that he sold to an Atlanta, Georgia, financing company.

“This defendant swindled a financing company to obtain money to run his own company and finance his personal lifestyle,” said U.S. Attorney John A. Horn.  “His fraud put the victim into bankruptcy and cost people at that company their jobs.” 

“As Mr. Perez serves his prison sentence, he will have plenty of time to reflect on his greed based criminal conduct that not only negatively affected the victim company but also many of its employees,” said J. Britt Johnson, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Atlanta Field Office.

According to U.S. Attorney Horn, the charges, and other information presented in court: Samuel Perez owned and operated Comp Care Partners, LLC, a New Jersey company that was located and operated in New Jersey.  Comp Care was in the business of managing occupational medical testing programs for other companies.  

Beginning in about December 2009, Perez began “factoring,” or selling Comp Care’s accounts receivables to a financing company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.  Perez falsified and caused to be falsified many, if not most, of the accounts receivables that he sold to the Atlanta finance company.  To support the false accounts receivables, Perez created false invoices purporting to reflect work that Comp Care had done for its customers.  When purchasing accounts receivables, the financing company attempted to contact Comp Care’s customers to verify that the accounts receivables and invoices were valid obligations of the customers.  Perez created fictitious identities and used those identities to pose as employees of Comp Care’s customers and verify the fraudulent invoices that he was selling to the financing company.  Perez created and used internet domain names, telephone numbers, and email addresses to pose as these fictitious employees of Comp Care’s customers.

To further conceal that he was selling false accounts receivables, Perez paid off false receivables by selling the financing company even more false accounts receivables.  Over time, the amount of false and fraudulent accounts receivables steadily increased, which ensured that Perez had enough funds to pay the financing company for previous fraudulent accounts receivables that he had sold it.  Perez also used the money that he obtained from the financing company to operate and fund Comp Care and his personal lifestyle. In 2013, before the financing company uncovered his fraud, Perez sold over $6 million in fraudulent accounts receivables.

Samuel Perez, 38, of Manahawkin, New, Jersey, has been sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Steve C. Jones to three years, ten months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas W. Gilfillan prosecuted the case.

For further information please contact the U.S. Attorney’s Public Affairs Office at USAGAN.PressEmails@usdoj.gov or (404) 581-6016.  The Internet address for the home page for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia Atlanta Division is http://www.justice.gov/usao/gan/.