Reading Man Sentenced for Wire Fraud and Identity Theft

Summary

A press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts dated May 19, 2022. It announces that Giorgio "George" Fiorenza of Reading was sentenced on May 17, 2022, by U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin to three years in prison, three years of supervised release and $20,508 in restitution, after pleading guilty on Dec. 14, 2021, to two counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. The release states that between August and September 2017 Fiorenza defrauded an elderly relative into signing a deed, then took out a $750,000 loan secured by the property and caused the lender to foreclose. It also states that between April and June 2020 Fiorenza filed Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims in the names of third parties and diverted some of the funds.

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                      United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins
                              District of Massachusetts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                          CONTACT: CHRISTINA DiIORIO-STERLING
May 19, 2022                                                      Phone (617) 748-3356
www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news.html                               usama.media@usdoj.gov

                                    twitter.com/dmanews1

      READING MAN SENTENCED FOR WIRE FRAUD AND IDENTITY THEFT

       BOSTON – A Reading man has been sentenced in connection with a scheme to defraud
an elderly relative of her interest in a three-family home and a separate scheme to defraud the
Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance.

        Giorgio “George” Fiorenza, 51, was sentenced on May 17, 2022 by U.S. District Court
Judge Leo T. Sorokin to three years in prison and three years of supervised release. Fiorenza was
also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $20,508. On Dec. 14, 2021, Fiorenza pleaded
guilty to two counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.

       Between August and September 2017, Fiorenza defrauded an elderly relative into signing
a deed conveying her interest in a property she owned with Fiorenza’s spouse and forged the
victim’s name on another document necessary to convey title to the property, both of which were
recorded in the Middlesex Registry of Deeds. Fiorenza then took out a $750,000 loan in his
spouse’s name and secured by the property, and subsequently caused the lender to foreclose on
the property. As a result of Fiorenza’s conduct, the victim was forced to move from the only
home she had ever known, where she had lived for more than seven decades and where her
family had had roots for generations.

        Between April and June 2020, Fiorenza filed claims for Pandemic Unemployment
Assistance (PUA) in the names of third parties and fraudulently diverted some of the funds for
his own use. PUA was a temporary federal unemployment insurance program created when
Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) in
March 2020 in response to the global coronavirus pandemic. The PUA program, which in
Massachusetts was administered by the Department of Unemployment Assistance, provided
unemployment insurance benefits for individuals who were not eligible for other types of
unemployment benefits. Among other things, Fiorenza filed a PUA claim using a victim’s
identity, directed the proceeds of the claim to an account in his spouse’s name, and did not
disclose to the victim or her husband that she had qualified for assistance.
       United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins; Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Special Agent in
Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division; and Jonathan Mellone, Special
Agent in Charge of Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, Labor Racketeering &
Fraud Investigations, made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kristen A. Kearney and
David M. Holcomb of Rollins’ Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit prosecuted the case.

         On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement
Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies
across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task
Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international
criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud
by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms,
identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing
and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more
information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, please
visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.

        Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can
report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF)
Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form
at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.

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