Rochester woman, 3 Florida men charged in fake invoice scheme

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A federal grand jury has indicted three Florida men and a woman from Rochester on a charge of conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

UPDATE: Three additional defendants named in fraudulent billing scheme

Dylan Paul Costanza, 30, Tommy Lee Coburn, 29, Kyle Paul Edward Gibson, 33, and Heather Dierna, 30, are facing a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Some of the defendants are also facing additional charges of mail fraud and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

Prosecutors claim that, between October 2020, and January 2022, the defendants sent fake invoices to large companies across the country for cleaning products, which the victim companies believed they had previously ordered and received.

Large companies were targeted because it was less likely during the COVID-19 pandemic that accounting departments at the companies would question the invoices, prosecutors claim.

They also targeted large companies because the small amounts owed on the phony invoices would be less likely to raise questions, and because the accounting departments do not order products and would be less likely to question the invoices.

The fraudulent invoices were mailed from Florida in the names of Hi-Tech Industrial and Nationwide Chemical, both sham companies, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Other fake invoices under the names North Atlantic Supply and Top Tier Chemicals, also sham companies, were mailed from Rochester, prosecutors said.

Although the invoices were intended to look legitimate, the defendants placed statements that the documents were merely “solicitations,” and that there was no obligation to pay the amounts listed on the fraudulent invoices, in hard-to-find places on page two of the invoice.

The defendants apparently believed that the statements provided a sufficient excuse if the invoices were questioned.

Prosecutors say about 4,640 companies were tricked into paying about $3.7 million.

After receiving the money, the defendants tried to hide the crime by sending inexpensive cleaning products to the victim companies.

A total of 10 companies in the Western District of New York were victimized. The companies are located in Henrietta, Lakewood (Chautauqua County) Brockport, Andover (Allegany County), Rochester, Avon, Tonawanda, and Niagara Falls.

In a similar case, two other men from Florida were charged in September in an indictment with attempt and conspiracy to commit mail fraud, and money laundering. Their scheme allegedly garnered about $2.2 million paid by victim companies for fake invoices.

The case against one of the men, Bryan Patrick Lantry, is pending. The other man, Sefa Dururvurur, expects to have the charges dismissed in a few months.

In court papers, Dururvurur is identified as the “sole owner” of Five Star Warehouse LLC. In February, Dururvurur had Rochester attorney Matthew R. Lembke plead guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud on behalf of Five Star for the crime that involved at least 1,338 victims nationwide, including 14 in western New York.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 10.

According to the plea agreement: “At sentencing, the government will move to dismiss the indictment pending against Sefa Dururvurur.”

Five Star faces a maximum sentence of a $500,000 fine, or no more than twice the loss caused by the crime, along with one to five years of probation, according to the plea agreement.

Five Star must pay $2.2 million in restitution, but no fine will be imposed because the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York agreed that a fine “fine would impair the ability of the defendant to pay restitution,” according to the plea.

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