An accountant who ran a practice in Elmhurst, Queens, is facing federal charges after prosecutors say he sold Long Island real estate investors ownership stakes in properties he never actually owned, then tried to erase his debts by lying to a bankruptcy judge. Alberto Gomez was arrested Monday morning in Boca Raton, Florida, and now awaits arraignment in New York federal court.
Prosecutors allege Gomez solicited investments in Long Island properties he did not own and, in some cases, sold more than 100 percent of the total ownership interest in a single property to multiple victims, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The federal indictment, unsealed Monday in Central Islip, accuses him of running the scheme out of his Elmhurst-based practice. Losses from the scheme topped $3 million across more than a dozen investors, with several victims putting in their life savings, the Justice Department says.
“As alleged in the indictment, Gomez brazenly stole millions of dollars from over a dozen investors, some of whom staked their life’s savings on his lies, and then shamelessly declared bankruptcy, doubling down by lying to the court as well,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr. said in a statement carried by US Attorney EDNY.
Bankruptcy Filing Allegedly Used to Dodge Repayment
Rather than repay the investors he’d defrauded, Gomez allegedly submitted a fraudulent bankruptcy petition to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York, per the DOJ’s account, and lied under oath in an effort to discharge his debts. That maneuver effectively tried to weaponize a court process designed to give honest debtors a fresh start, turning it into a second layer of the alleged fraud against the same victims…