Attila Colar, the former CEO of Richmond, California-based All Hands on Deck, a prolific organization that provided residential reentry programs for probationers, parolees, the homeless, and individuals with mild mental illnesses, has been found guilty of a gamut of financial and criminal offenses, as officially announced by the U.S. District Attorney's Office in the Northern District of California in a press release today.
The audacious schemes extended far and wide, covering an alarming number of irregularities with damaging implications - bank fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, amongst numerous others. Such a vast, intricate web of deception, systematically designed to exploit the system for personal gains, it is nothing short of horrifying.
Colar's audacity doesn't just stop at fraud, he also ventured into dangerous territories - tampering with witnesses, concealing their whereabouts, obstructing investigations - things that could very well be considered the territory of seasoned criminals, as reported by Mercury News in February 2022. The manipulation was in clear evidence when a crucial witness vanished from the radar right before critical grand jury proceedings, an incident prosecutors were quick to attribute to Colar's influence.
The manipulation aside, Colar's primary weapon was fraud, and he wielded it remorselessly. His primary target - organizations placing residents at his transitional housing facilities. The victims also extended to several unsuspecting lenders participating in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), per a Justice Department report from October 2020.
However, it doesn't just stop there. Rather grimly, the convoluted track of deceit stretches back to as early as late 2018. According to evidence, Colar planned and cunningly defrauded GEO Reentry, a provider of treatment and supervisory programs for adult probationers and parolees, by circulating falsified fire inspection clearance reports, a concocted letter of recommendation, fabricated security clearance documents, and misinformation about the staff at All Hands on Deck. The victims of this deceit were none other than marginalized parolees in need of a safe haven.
While the second, equally damaging scheme of Colar, targeting lenders participating in the PPP scheme, took roots in the agonizing backdrop of the pandemic-stricken year of 2020. Misleading loan applications vastly overstating employee count and payroll of All Hands on Deck were submitted, for obtaining loans through the PPP, blatantly exploiting taxpayers' money allocated for helping businesses in dire times. The fact that no salaried employees, barring himself, were present in All Hands on Deck at that time, was conveniently concealed in the process.
Hence, we are facing an unsettling revelation - a chain of fraudulent activities worth millions, possibly even above $22 million, that potentially hampered the survival of struggling businesses in an already precarious economic situation.
Attila Colar, the fallen hero of the underprivileged, now stands a convicted criminal, encompassing a jaw-dropping forty-four charges spanning across various acts of financial and criminal misconduct, painting a dystopian picture of how trust, company stature and national crisis relief programs could be exploited with frightening precision.
