Crime & Safety
Macomb Man Faces Prison Time for Role in Alleged Credit-Wiping Scam
A federal indictment charges that Bernadino Pavone was part of a scam to defraud customers by claiming that his company, ICR, possessed a computer program that was capable of erasing negative information from credit reports.
A Macomb Township man and his 75-year-old mother are due to be sentenced Dec. 17 for their role in a scam that federal prosecutors say duped customers out of millions of dollars, The Macomb Daily reports.
Initially indicted in 2004, Bernadino Pavone and Gloria Tactac entered a plea bargain with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit in 2011.
Pavone is the father of Julian Pavone, the 8-year-old musical prodigy most recently named "world's youngest professional drummer" by the Guinness Book of World Records.
Find out what's happening in Macomb Townshipwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The 2004 indictment charges that Bernadino Pavone, Gloria Tactac and Abood Samaan, a co-defendant, were part of a scam to defraud customers by claiming that their company, ICR, possessed a computer program that was capable of erasing negative information from credit reports.
Sold through a multilevel marketing organization, ICR falsely claimed that their "credit-repair services" could remove derogatory information from consumers’ credit reports by use of a "one-of-a-kind computer disk," according to a report from the Federal Trade Commission.
Find out what's happening in Macomb Townshipwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The FTC reports that the defendants had sold their credit-repair service to more than 183,000 consumers, collecting more than $53 million, since 1996.
Per Pavone's plea bargain, his sentence will be capped at 97 months, with a minimum $15,000 fine Tactac, whose sentence will be capped at 48 months, faces a minimum $7,500 fine, according to The Macomb Daily.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.