A former county legislator in New York and his former girlfriend from Connecticut convicted of scamming more than a quarter million dollars from a business now are facing justice, a U.S. attorney said in a news release.
George Guldi, 69 and now of Ludlow, Vermont, and Victoria Davidson, 57, of Lakeville, Connecticut, defrauded mortgage lender Ditech Financial LLC of $250,000, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release issued Wednesday, Jan. 25. Guldi, a disbarred attorney, and Davidson, convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, wire fraud and bank fraud, are scheduled to be sentenced May 30 and 31 respectively.
"George Guldi, while in prison, concocted and conducted a scheme along with his co-conspirator, Victoria Davidson, to brazenly steal more than $250,000 through blatant lies," U.S. Attorney for New York's Southern District said in the news release. "Today, a jury held them accountable for their scheme, and they will both face justice for their shameless misconduct."
Guldi was a Suffolk County legislator representing South Fork from January 1994 to December 2003.
Conspiracy and bank fraud counts against Guldi and Davidson each carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison while the wire fraud counts each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years, according to the news release.
There is no parole in the federal system.
A federal jury, after an almost two-week trial before U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, found the two guilty on all counts against them.
The charges are rooted in Ditech Financial's receipt of $250,000 in February 2017, according to various court documents, including the superseding indictment. The money came from the resolution of a civil litigation that involved many financial institutions. Ditech, mistaking the money for a mortgage payment from Guldi, the following month wrote to the former county legislator that they could not credit the payment because he owed more.
Guldi, then in state prison "for insurance-related offenses," got assistance from Davidson "to 'break' the funds 'loose,' as he put it in a recorded call from prison," the news release said.
After weeks of "misrepresentations," Ditech financial eventually wired the funds to Davidson's personal bank account, the news release said. Davidson used the money to pay various of her and Guldi's expenses and to purchase cashier's checks.
"Within months, the money was gone," the news release said.
