What do Dahood Sariff Bey, Sharieff Dahood Bey, Saharieff Pasha, and Georgi Petrako have in common? They have all been fraudulently used by Attila Colar. On June 23, 2023, Colar was convicted of forty-four counts that included conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, false statements to a bank, destruction of property to prevent a search, possession of a firearm as a felon, making a false tax return, obstruction, and witness tampering, by a federal jury on June 23, 2023. Colar was a master fraudster.
In 2019, Colar was fresh out of prison for prior fraud convictions when he concocted his next scheme. Using a fraudulent name, Colar applied to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for a contract to provide housing and rehabilitation for parolees leaving state prisons. The kicker is Colar didn’t need to use a fraudulent name. Former felons are considered or landlord contracts in the California state-funded rehabilitation program. But if you have the names, might as well use them.
Colar said his company, All Hands On deck, provided a residential reentry program for probationers, parolees, homeless people and people with mild mental illnesses. Another lie. No services were provided. Only abuse and neglect.
While Colar had no intention of providing rehabilitative services to the parolees, he quickly saw the additional fraud potential with the COVID-19 CARES Act. Colar impersonated multiple CEOs and misused the identities of residents in his housing facility without their consent, submitting 16 fraudulent PPP loan applications seeking a total of $34,655,437. The applications substantially overstated the number and payroll of All Hands on Deck employees, stating All Hands on Deck had approximately 73 to 81 employees. The business had, in fact, no salaried employees other than himself. In total Colar fraudulently netted $1 million in fraudulent PPP loans.
Outstanding job by the COVID-19 Fraud Strike Force.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Bay Area man lied to win a California rehab contract. Now he’s convicted of exploiting parolees in his care” published by Cal Matters on September 6, 2023
Nearly three years after being released from state prison for defrauding the government, Attila Colar saw a new opportunity to pull in steady money from California taxpayers.
He didn’t even need to hide his criminal past when he applied for a contract with a California rehabilitation program for parolees leaving state prisons. Former felons are welcome as landlords in the state-funded rehabilitation program, and many have a strong history providing services to their tenants. But he covered up his record, anyway.
Using one of his five aliases, Colar, 51, eased through the vetting process at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in the fall of 2019.
