Veronica Castro, 44, of Glendale, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and was ordered to pay $1,145,392 in restitution. Castro had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud along with co-defendant Yomtov Scott Menaged. Menaged was previously sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment for his role in the bank fraud and other associated schemes.
Castro was a long time employee of Menaged who owned and operated retail furniture stores in the Phoenix area. Castro helped Menaged operate an elaborate identity theft scheme involving purported customers of the various retail furniture stores. Menaged obtained personal identification information of recently deceased individuals and used their information to submit false credit card applications to banks. Castro created false and fraudulent credit applications and receipts listing the same names and personal identification information to submit to the banks in an attempt to conceal the fraud after payments were issued on the fraudulent accounts. In fact, no real furniture purchases ever took place. The scheme resulted in a more than $1 million loss to the bank.