Las Vegas credit fraud duo sent to prison

The owners of a company that performed a fake “credit sweep” service through reverse identity theft were sentenced Tuesday to up to six years in prison.

Prosecutors said Michael Olden and Shafiq Beria cleaned up the credit reports of at least 416 people by creating false identity theft cases between 2012 and 2013.

Through their company, Tradeline Pros, Olden and Beria lured clients with ads on Craigslist and charged them between $2,000 and $5,000 to erase negative credit ratings, promising an opportunity their competitors couldn’t match.

“Unfortunately that better way of cleaning credit was a systematic business based upon forgery,” Chief Deputy District Attorney J.P. Raman said during the sentencing hearing.

The Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service spent a year investigating Tradeline Pros after a credit reporting agency flagged one of the forged reports.

Prosecutors said the company flooded credit bureaus with forged Federal Trade Commission identity theft forms and created 174 false reports from Las Vegas and Henderson police, along with other departments across the country.

Tradeline Pros sent the phony documents to TransUnion, Experian and Equifax, all consumer credit reporting agencies, on behalf of their clients, allowing them to obtain car loans and home mortgages.

“They knew what they were doing was wrong,” Raman said. “They made identity theft a for-profit business. They discovered and developed criminal enterprise off the other side of identity theft. ‘Let’s fake that people have identity theft. Let’s use it to our own gain. Let’s profit off these people. Let’s submit a ton of forged police reports to the credit bureaus.’ ”

In December, not long after their arrests, Beria and Olden pleaded guilty to establishing or possessing a financial forgery laboratory.

When authorities searched the business at 2800 Sahara Ave., they found the company had copies of notary stamps and dissemination insignia for the Metropolitan Police Department. Investigators also recovered a list of police officer names and badge numbers from law enforcement agencies from around the U.S.

Olden and Beria pleaded guilty in December to establishing or possessing a financial forgery laboratory, a felony.

“I’m really sorry for what I’ve done,” Beria told District Judge Douglas Herndon before sentencing. Olden said he was “very remorseful.”

Their lawyers asked Herndon for probation instead of prison time.

Peter James Christiansen, who represents Olden, called him a “very good guy.” Richard Schonfeld, who represents Beria, said his client “lost his way” but was “a man of integrity.”

Raman said police departments across the country now require extra man hours to verify identity theft reports with credit bureaus.

The men had faced a maximum of 20 years in prison. They will be eligible for parole after 18 months.

“It’s the kind of crime that has the capability of wreaking devastation across huge realms of people,” Herndon said as he handed down the sentences. “All of these financial forgery laboratory-type cases are insidious in the way that they go about wreaking havoc across financial institutions of the country.”

The judge commended the men for admitting to the crime.

“But what’s important is what you weren’t doing when nobody was watching,” Herndon said. “And that is you just kept doing it and doing it and doing it, and taking in business.”

Eight other people who worked for Beria and Olden were initially charged in the case. Prosecutors dropped charges against one of the workers.

Meanwhile, Leticia Menjivar, Denise Navarro, Janette Navarro, Rashid Salim, and Donnie Coloma have all pleaded guilty. Coloma is scheduled to be sentenced July 15. Salim was sentenced to four years of probation. Menjivar and Navarro have not been sentenced.

Another employee, James Kobernusz, is scheduled for jury trial in December, while another salesman for the company, Arthur Bethae, is awaiting extradition from Pennsylvania, where he is in prison on fraud charges.

Raman said the employees were pushed into the criminal aspect of the business by Beria and Olden.

“They created criminals,” the prosecutor said.

Contact reporter David Ferrara at 702-380-1039 or dferrara@reviewjournal.com. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker.