An Orlando woman who owned and managed a construction company has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud after an investigation uncovered a multi-million-dollar scheme.
On Wednesday, July 17, U.S. Attorney Roger B. Handberg announced that 47-year-old Wendy Cudemo-Gamez has pleaded guilty to one count of the above charge.
According to the plea agreement, Cudemo-Gamez registered a construction company that she owned with the State of Florida in May of 2021. The company claimed to provide construction services and labor to construction site contractors.
In order to comply with state laws, Cudemo-Gamez’s company was required to secure and maintain adequate worker’s compensation insurance coverage. Providers of such insurance based the premiums that they charged and the amount of coverage they provided on the number of employees that a company had and the total annual payroll of those employees.
The plea agreement stated that Cudemo-Gamez’s company had agreements with contractors and subcontractors to use workers, which were purported to be her employees, at construction sites. However, these workers were often undocumented aliens who were actually working for, and under, the daily supervision and direction of the contractors.
Cudemo-Gamez, or others on behalf of her company, would then regularly receive “payroll checks” from contractors that were cashed at various financial institutions to pay her “employees” and to cover the cost of other expenses.
Over an unspecified period of time, Cudemo-Gamez falsely and fraudulently stated in insurance applications that her company had a “very limited payroll,” as well as a “very limited number of employees who worked on construction jobsites.”
In addition, Cudemo-Gamez made false claims to numerous contractors via wire communications that her employees had full worker’s compensation coverage.
In reality, Cudemo-Gamez’s company received and cashed more than $7.8 million in checks from multiple construction contractors. These payroll figures far exceeded the “very limited” payroll figures that Cudemo-Gamez had reported to her worker’s compensation insurance company.
As a result, the “employees” of Cudemo-Gamez’s company, which were actually the employees of other entities, performed work on jobsites without adequate insurance coverage. In addition, the insurers also lost revenue for insurance premiums that they would have charged if they had been aware of the actual number of workers requiring coverage.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida stated that Cudemo-Gamez also failed to ensure that her company’s workers were legally authorized to work in the country and that required state and federal payroll taxes were being paid for these workers. The contractors who actually paid these workers’ wages and used their services were able to evade these responsibilities as well.
Cudemo-Gamez is facing a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.
This case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the State of Florida Department of Financial Services. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay L. Hoffer.