Businessman Luis Joel Ortiz Perez will appear Wednesday before federal Judge Bruce J. McGiverin to plead guilty to one or more of the 54 criminal charges he faces in a million-dollar fraud scheme that affected several financial institutions.
To Ortiz Pérez – who between 2012 and 2019 founded Green Life Recycling Solutions, LJ Orp. Commodities and Yo-Jo Commodities, is accused of defrauding a bank and two cooperative societies using electronic payment terminals through which he conducted numerous false transactions.
Throughout the scheme — which began in September 2018 and extended through July 2019 — Ortiz Perez obtained money from declined and/or unauthorized electronic transactions and, on some occasions, split the profits with people who provided him with Visa card account numbers to advance the scheme.
According to the indictment, the defendant also carried out other schemes, including forging documents and using email and other interstate communications to open bank accounts under false pretenses at the three institutions.
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The businessman defrauded Gura Coop (Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito Saulo D. Rodríguez) of US$2,231,550, while Oriental Bank suffered a loss of US$376,395 through unauthorized electronic transactions.
The third organization affected by the scheme was Naguabo Coop, which Ortiz Perez managed to defraud of $195,240.
In total, Ortiz-Perez faces 13 counts of bank fraud, another 22 counts of wire fraud, and 19 counts of cash transactions for goods derived from specified illegal activity.
The prosecution highlighted in the indictment that for the bank and wire fraud charges, a repayment of US$831,783.46 will be required to cover the losses of the two cooperatives, while the other 19 cooperatives will be asked for a reward of US$882,117.63.
Ortiz Perez was arrested on August 29, 2022, and since then, he has been in the free community on bail. However, last week his legal representative asked the court to modify the conditions of his supervised release so that he would be allowed to travel to the United States, since you have obtained a position and/ Or a job opportunity that requires constant movement between the two countries.
Judge McGiverin granted the request last Friday after the US Probation Office (USPO) did not oppose it.
