Florida man indicted over £2million loans fraud

A man from Florida is to face charges of defrauding Wells Fargo, CIT Group and Key Bank of over $2million by using fake identifies to set up finance deals.

According to the US Attorney’s office for the middle district of Florida, Jeffrey Ihm assumed the identities of and posed as executives of a number of companies, including Roper Industries, Kinetic Technologies, CSX Corporation and Convergence Consulting Group. He then generated false and fraudulent emails and other documents in the names of the companies’ executives in order to defraud Wells Fargo, CIT Group and Key Bank.

In one instance, Ihm allegedly purchased a $32,000 minivan from a dealership, claiming to be the vice president of a New York-based corporation in order to get a loan for the vehicle. When he started to miss payments and the van went into collections, the dealership discovered that the business phone number listed on Ihm’s application was, in fact, his mobile phone, and the company named on the application told investigators they have no idea who Ihm was and said he had never been employed with their company.

In total the financial institutions transferred a total of $2,297,665 to Ihm, who now faces 14 counts of wire fraud and five counts of aggravated identity theft. No date has so far been announced for the trial, and the attorney’s office stated that an indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has committed one or more violations of federal criminal law, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless, and until, proven guilty.