Paul Paredes

Introduction

Paul Paredes, a 54-year-old business consultant from Buffalo, New York, was convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft and sentenced to 87 months in federal prison by Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford, with restitution ordered at $8,754,446.64 to 57 victims. Since 2013 Paredes had owned J&E Business Consulting LLC, a firm that acted as a broker between credit card processing companies and smaller retail businesses — a position that gave him the personal and financial information of his own clients, which he then turned against them. Between April 2019 and August 2023, he submitted hundreds of fraudulent financing applications to dozens of lenders using his business customers’ identities, all without their knowledge, consent, or authorization.

Background Information

J&E Business Consulting’s legitimate service was the source of the fraud. Small businesses that used the firm provided their financial information to Paredes — the owner’s identifying information including driver’s license, Social Security number, and email, as well as bank account details — precisely the inventory a broker needs to process financing. Paredes instead used that trusted pipeline to prepare financing agreements in his victims’ names for goods and services allegedly provided by him, with the funds payable to bank accounts he controlled. The scheme ran from Rochester, New York, against out-of-state lenders located throughout the country, including in New Jersey, Virginia, Illinois, Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Washington, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado, and Minnesota.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Paul Paredes used the identities of at least 63 individuals to defraud at least 23 victim lenders out of at least $3.5 million through hundreds of fraudulent financing applications, was convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, and was sentenced to 87 months in prison with $8.75 million in restitution.

The mechanics were industrial in scale. After a fraudulent financing agreement was approved, money from the victim lender was deposited into one of numerous bank accounts controlled by Paredes, who used the funds for personal expenses, to pay salaries and operating expenses, or to make payments to victim lenders to avoid detection of the fraudulent loans. Those protective payments kept the scheme alive: by keeping lenders paid, Paredes was able to continue making similar fraudulent financing agreements with multiple victim lenders without discovery. On occasions when victims received communications from lenders about the fraudulent agreements, Paredes misled them about the purpose of the communications and told them he would handle it — using his broker role itself as the concealment layer.

The scope the government documented at conviction: identities of at least 63 individuals misused, at least 23 victim lenders defrauded, at least 12 different bank accounts used to move the money, and a total loss of at least $3,500,000. The sentencing court translated that record into 87 months in prison and a restitution obligation of $8,754,446.64 spread across 57 victims — a restitution figure larger than the charged minimum loss because it compensates the full victim pool the investigation identified.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The sentencing was announced by U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo, whose office documented a three-agency investigation: the Federal Bureau of Investigation under Special Agent-in-Charge Allen D. Davis, II, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division under Special Agent-in-Charge Harry Chavis, and the New York State Department of Financial Services–Criminal Investigation Bureau under Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Katelyn M. Hartford.

The consequences documented at sentencing are custody, restitution, and a federal fraud record: 87 months in prison, the $8.75 million repayment order to 57 victims, and convictions on wire fraud and aggravated identity theft — the latter a count that specifically criminalizes the misuse of the personal information his clients had handed him.

Current Status

Paredes, 54, is sentenced to serve 87 months following his conviction, and owes $8,754,446.64 in restitution to 57 victims by court order. The release does not report an appeal or additional defendants, and the sentencing is recorded as the product of the FBI, IRS-CI, and state financial-services investigators working the lender side of the scheme. At 54, Paredes will spend roughly the next seven years in federal custody, with the restitution obligation — more than double the minimum documented loss — attached to him for the period the law allows collection.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Paredes’s consulting business was both the instrument and the casualty of the scheme: a broker whose clients trusted him with driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, and bank accounts used that access to borrow in their names across eleven states’ worth of lenders. The aggravated identity theft conviction converts each misuse of a client’s identity into part of the criminal record itself. For the 57 victims, the court’s restitution order recognizes them as the direct casualties — small business owners whose credit files were borrowed without their knowledge, some of whom fielded confused lender communications their own broker then explained away. For Paredes, the 87-month sentence ends a consulting career that ran from 2013 to his conviction, with the last four years of it documented as a fraud engine.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of New York, “Rochester man going to prison for defrauding millions of dollars from lending companies and small businesses,” November 2026. source