Stockton Brothers Indicted for Wire Fraud Conspiracy Over Fake Invoices
On June 20, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury had indicted brothers Hector Perez and Flavio Perez, of Stockton, in San Joaquin County, California, accusing them of defrauding invoice factoring companies with fabricated invoices and causing more than $1.8 million in losses. Acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith announced the indictment. Both men were arrested on June 17, 2025.
Hector Perez is 34 and Flavio Perez is 29. The indictment contains eight counts: both brothers are charged with wire fraud conspiracy, and Hector Perez is additionally charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Prosecutors said that between May 2018 and November 2020, the brothers created corporate entities posing as businesses seeking to sell debt, and sold fraudulent invoices to at least four invoice factoring companies. Invoice factoring is a financial service that provides immediate cash flow to a business in exchange for its outstanding invoices; the factoring company that buys the invoices then has the right to collect the money owed by the debtors. After the victim companies transferred money to bank accounts controlled by one or both defendants, they either never got paid on the fake invoices they had purchased or were paid much less than they were due.
Prosecutors said the payments that were made generally came from bank accounts held in the names of fictitious debtors, and were designed to disguise the fraud so the defendants could avoid detection and continue the scheme. According to the indictment, from May 2018 through September 2020, the victims' overall losses totaled more than $1.8 million.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Denise N. Yasinow and Matthew Thuesen are prosecuting the case. If convicted, Hector Perez faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the wire fraud and conspiracy counts, plus a mandatory consecutive two years in prison for the aggravated identity theft count; Flavio Perez faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the conspiracy count. Any sentence would be determined by the court after consideration of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and other factors. The charges are only allegations; the defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
(Source: U.S. Department of Justice)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于加州萨克拉门托县萨克拉门托市的 Robert T. Matsui 美国法院大楼入口广场，加州东区联邦法院所在地，本案在此区起诉。Tony Webster 摄，CC BY-SA 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The entrance plaza of the Robert T. Matsui United States Courthouse in Sacramento, Sacramento County, California, home of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, where this case was charged. Photo by Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
