California woman ordered to pay $856,000 In restitution for defrauding santa teresa company
United States Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales announced that earlier today, Flavia Bolourchi, 59, of Sacramento, California, was sentenced to 37 months of imprisonment and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $856,000 by Chief United States District Judge Bruce D. Black. Bolourchi pled guilty on March 10, 2010, to mail fraud, interstate transportation of stolen property, money laundering and tax evasion.
The indictment alleges that between January 3, 1997 and August 20, 1999, Bolourchi was employed as the financial officer of Spartan Health Sciences School of Medicine (“Spartan”). In March 1998, Spartan moved its corporate headquarters to El Paso, Texas and Santa Teresa, New Mexico. As part of her duties, Bolourchi received student loan checks and disbursed them to students to cover tuition and other expenses. Instead of depositing funds from these checks into Spartan’s bank account, Bolourchi deposited the funds into her own bank account in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. To conceal her fraud, Bolourchi made false entries in Spartan’s financial records. Bolourchi also failed to pay $320,483 in federal income taxes on the income she obtained by defrauding Spartan.
The charges against Bolourchi were filed in 2002, and she was arrested in November 2009 after having been apprehended in Bahrain. The court later released her on a $25,000 bond. After sentencing, Judge Black permitted Bolourchi to remain on bond until she is directed to report to the Bureau of Prisons for service of her sentence.
The charges stemmed from an investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Internal Revenue Service. The case was prosecuted by Supervisory Assistant United States Attorney Richard Williams.
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