Co-defendent in Bio-Fuel Scam Pleads Guilty

by Hugh R. Morley (The Record/NorthJersey.com) ... A Ridgewood businesswoman has pleaded guilty to a charge that she took part in a $100 million biofuel fraud as a top executive of two Bergen County alternative-energy companies that authorities say carried out the scam.
Evelyn Katirina Pattison, who is also known as Katirina Tracy, admitted making false claims to the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency in a scheme for which she and the companies' co-owner, Joseph Furando, were indicted in September.
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The indictment accused Furando, 47 at the time and co-owner of Cima Green LLC and the Caravan Trading Co., and Pattison, at the time 27 and chief operating officer of Cima Green and director of Caravan, of taking part in a scheme involving the sale of more than 35 million gallons of fraudulently mislabeled alternative fuels to truck stops and service stations at prices inflated by false claims that the fuel was government-certified top-quality biodiesel
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Authorities said that from July 2009 to May 2012, Furando, Pattison and five executives of E-Biofuels, an Indiana biofuels producer, carried out a scheme to sell the lower quality biodiesel as pure biodiesel. The government said that they also bought biofuel that had been sold once and, therefore, carried no tax credit, fraudulently claiming that it was newly produced and entitled to a tax credit. READ MORE