A woman from Lawrence, who owned a tax preparation company, was sentenced to prison for bank fraud and $2.1 million in Covid relief fraud.
LAWRENCE, Mass. (WWLP) – A Massachusetts woman who owned a tax preparation company was sentenced to prison for bank fraud and $2.1 million in Covid relief fraud.
According to the Department of Justice, 42-year-old Luz Paulino owned and operated Agape Financial Services, a Lowell-based company that provided tax preparation and notary services. She allegedly filed false and fraudulent federal tax returns for the calendar year 2019 using the stolen identities, names, and Social Security numbers of individual victims.
The Department of Justice says that she concealed her involvement by stating the returns had been prepared by two former employees of Agape. She then used the fraudulent returns to obtain Refund Advance Loans in the names of her victims and then cashed the loan checks using false identification documents and forged signatures.
Paulino also stole identities of people in California, Michigan, Indiana, and elsewhere to apply to the SBA for $2.1 million in COVID-19 Emergency Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL). She filed applications between June 2020 and October 2021 listing fake companies that appeared to suffer revenue loss due to the coronavirus pandemic.
She used the money to purchase a 2020 Cadillac for $86,000 and to wire more than $395,000 to a jewelry business in the Dominican Republic, among other expenditures.
Paulino was charged by criminal complaint in December 2019 and indicted by a federal grand jury in January 2021. While on pretrial release, she left the United States and remained a fugitive for 19 months before Panamanian authorities returned her to the United States.
On June 25th, Paulino pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud conspiracy, one count of bank fraud, two counts of wire fraud, and two counts of aggravated identity theft. She was sentenced to 54 months in prison, four years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $37,056 in restitution to MetaBank and $456,300 to the Small Business Administration.
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