Contact: Richard W. Murphy
Assistant U.S. Attorney
(207) 780-3257

Portland, Maine: The United States Attorney’s Office announced that Matthew J. LaForge, age
38, of Brunswick, Maine was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Portland by Judge Nancy Torresen
to two years imprisonment for convictions on two counts of mail fraud and one count of income tax
evasion. He was ordered to pay $530,129.95 in restitution, and to serve three years supervised
release. LaForge pled guilty to the charges on August 7, 2012.

Court records reveal that LaForge defrauded Wright Express and L.L. Bean, two former
employers, by use of a mail fraud scheme. During 2006-2008, while employed by Wright Express as a
business analyst, LaForge prepared and submitted invoices to Wright Express for marketing services
totaling around $230,000, using the name of a fictitious company and directing payments be sent to a
mailbox address that he had opened in New Hampshire. After leaving Wright Express in 2008 and going
to work at L.L. Bean as a financial analyst, LaForge reinstituted the scheme in 2009 and over the next
two years billed that company around $220,000 in the same fashion. When the scheme was uncovered
by L.L. Bean in 2011, LaForge admitted to his prior fraud at Wright Express. LaForge also failed to report
any of the illicit income on his federal income tax returns for the years 2006-2010, resulting in over
$89,000 in unpaid income taxes.

The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Internal Revenue
Service – Criminal Investigation Division.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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