Apollo Nida, the husband of The Real Housewives of Atlanta star Phaedra Parks, has pleaded guilty to charges of bank fraud and identity theft.
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Nida pleaded guilty on Tuesday after laundering over $2.3 million in the last four years by creating fake companies to steal people's identities in order to open fraudulent bank accounts in their names and deposit stolen money, E! News reported.
"This defendant participated in a sweeping fraud scheme that exploited many segments of the financial system, including phony claims submitted to federal and state agencies, loans secured by vehicles, and even basic identity theft associated with stolen checks," United States attorney Sally Quillian Yates said in a statement obtained by E! News.
"Nida and his conspirators were conniving and creative in their scheme to steal victims' identities and defraud them. The United States Secret Service will continue to adapt its investigative methodologies to arrest criminals who use their technological savvy to violate unsuspecting victims such as those in this case," added Reginald G. Moore, an Atlanta-based U.S. Secret Service agent.
According to a complaint filed in January, Nida was behind two fake debt-collection businesses that were used to illicitly obtain personal identifying information of individuals, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time.
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Nida also reportedly opened a fake auto dealership and applied for auto loans in the names of some of the stolen identities.
Money deposited into the fake bank accounts were allegedly in the following forms: Auto loan checks, stolen U.S. Treasury checks, stolen retirement checks issued to Delta Airlines employees, and checks in the names of real people who were owed unclaimed property from various state and federal government agencies.
A woman named Gayla St. Julien admitted she had done most of the legwork for Nida in the fraudulent schemes he's orchestrated since August 2009 although she pocketed only "scraps." The Journal Constitution reported 40 bank accounts in total had been tied to St. Julien.
Nida will be sentenced at a later date. He was previously imprisoned from 2004 to 2009 for breaking federal racketeering laws related to auto-title fraud.
Nida married Parks, an attorney, the same year he was released from jail. The pair also began appearing on Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta together in 2009. They welcomed their first child, a son named Ayden, in 2010. Parks then gave birth to their second child, a son named Dylan, in May 2013.
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski