The chief technology officer of New Jersey-based law firm Budd Larner has been accused of stealing nearly $1 million over the course of a number of years, according to documents filed in two interconnected suits in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
An indictment brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York that was unsealed in early February charged the Budd Larner CTO Rocco Romeo and a co-defendant, Jacqueline Galler, with four criminal counts, including wire fraud and money laundering-related charges.
According to the prosecutors, the unnamed New Jersey-based company had been defrauded by Romeo through a sophisticated system of falsified invoices, fake companies and conspicuous efforts to conceal the alleged scheme that cost the firm $900,000 over three years.
The scheme, prosecutors claim, started with Romeo receiving invoices generated by a company that went by several versions of the name Seventech. The invoices were routed through two online payment platforms, FreshBooks and PayPal, and sent directly to Romeo.
When asked by Budd Larner about the nature of the company, Romeo allegedly painted the company as a Silicon Valley tech firm with employees operating under a nondisclosure agreement with former employers. This, prosecutors say Romeo claimed, was why all communications need to go through him directly.
In fact, federal authorities claim, the company is a fiction used by Romeo and his co-defendant to bilk the firm for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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