Clearwater woman charged with fraud

CLEARWATER — U.S. Attorney A. Lee Bentley III announced the indictment of Victoria Snow, 54, of Clearwater, and Brian Newton, 56, of Port Orange, on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud.

The two are accused of filing false invoices from Dataforce International Inc. with Amerifactors Financial Group and Prestige Funding. According to a statement, they were arrested Monday and made their initial appearances in federal court in Orlando Monday afternoon.

Dataforce had a contract to sell its invoices to Amerifactors for an advance, a practice also known as factoring. From 2003 until August 2009, Newton and Snow, who worked for Dataforce, allegedly submitted a series of invoices for factoring to Amerifactors that were inflated and did not reflect work that had been performed by Dataforce. In addition, Newton and Snow allegedly sold the same Dataforce invoices for factoring to both Amerifactors and Prestige Funding.

The complaint says Newton and Snow altered work orders to deceive the two companies and falsely represented that Dataforce had an arrangement to factor its invoices with Prestige Funding.

The U.S. attorney says the scheme netted the two more than $6 million.

If convicted, each faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg.