A South Florida woman has been ordered to pay over $600,000 for her role in filing false Deepwater Horizon claims.
The Justice Department said in a statement that Caridad Rioseco Alejandrez, 51 of Key West, was ordered by a federal judge to pay $607,566 for her involvement in filing false claims tied to the April 2010 spill.
The DOJ said the restitution payment reflected the actual losses suffered by the Gulf Coat Claims Facility (GCCF) trust fund as a result of false claims handled by Alejandrez for her family members and “hundreds of Key West area residents.”
Alejandrez previously pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud in connection to the case and was sentenced to forty-eight months in prison and three years of supervised release.
Alejandrez’s father, Raul Rioseco, 74, previously pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and was sentenced to one year and a day in prison in connection with his involvement in a similar false claim. The court ordered him to make restitution payments totaling $144,606 to the Deepwater Horizon Fund.
The DOJ said that Alejandrez also facilitated the filing of “hundreds of other false claims” with the GCCF by completing claims paperwork and producing fraudulent tax returns, wage statements and loss statements to support the false claims.
Prosecutors advised the court that records showed the total amount tied to claims filed by Alejandrez and Rioseco approached $1.5 million.
However, the actual amount paid out by the GCCF for the claims was just over $607,000, the DOJ added.
