Former executives get prison for nearly $2M defrauding of Arrow Electronics
A former vice president at Colorado-based Arrow Electronics and the CEO of a contractor have been sentenced to federal prison for defrauding Arrow a global provider of system services and components of nearly million Michael Vergato who worked for Arrow was sentenced to months in prison Mark Perlstein was sentenced to months and fined The U S Attorney s Office for the District of Colorado disclosed Monday that Vergato was convicted on six counts of wire fraud after a six-day trial in May Perlstein pleaded guilty to wire fraud in June The men were jointly ordered to make restitution of million Each will serve three years of supervised release after their prison terms Officials stated according to Perlstein s plea agreement and evidence presented at Vergato s trial the two devised a scheme to bill Arrow Electronics based in Centennial for performance tuning services Vergato oversaw performance tuning of Arrow s Oracle EBS content bases including work by Perlstein s company Perlstein and Vergato billed the records management company for services purportedly done by a shell company created by Vergato The company Oracle Performance Tuning and Optimization or OPTO submitted fraudulent contracts and invoices to Arrow for work that was never performed according to leadership Perlstein approved the invoices and wired payments to OPTO Nearly million in company funds were funneled to OPTO administration mentioned Perlstein and Vergato divided the proceeds and concealed their involvement by using personal email accounts other corporate entities and fake identities Vergato used his stepdaughter s identity to conduct business on behalf of OPTO according to bureaucrats Tax records validated OPTO paid no salaries and issued no contractor forms Vergato kept approximately of the million spending it on luxury vehicles credit card payments retirement accounts and rent Perlstein personally received more than million Corporate fraud of this magnitude undermines confidence in our business society and harms employees customers and shareholders alike revealed U S Attorney Peter McNeilly These sentences send a clear message executives who abuse their authority for personal gain will be held accountable U S District Judge Nina Y Wang presided over the sentencing The FBI investigated the situation The prosecution was handled by assistant U S attorneys Nicole Cassidy Bradley Giles and Bob Brown Get more business news by signing up for our Business activity Now newsletter Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter
