By Pamela Sroka-Holzmann
The Express-Times
(TNS)
A 48-year-old Allentown woman has admitted to her part in a scheme to defraud the federal government of COVID relief funds and tax returns.
On Tuesday, Mayerlyn Cordero appeared before United States District Judge Joseph F. Leeson Jr. and pleaded guilty to five counts felony wire fraud and one count felony conspiracy to file false claims.
Cordero is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 3. She faces a maximum of up to 110 years in federal prison.
For each count of wire fraud, Cordero faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, as well as three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. For the conspiracy charge, she faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, as well as three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.
Co-defendants Jessenia Cordero, 46, and her husband, Jose Baez, both of Park Boulevard in Allentown, each initially were charged with two counts felony conspiracy to commit wire fraud; two counts felony conspiracy to file false claims; one count felony aggravated identity theft; and one count felony conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft.
Court records do not indicate how the married couple is related to Mayerlyn Cordero.
Baez and Jessenia Cordero each have plea documents docketed in their cases, but those documents are sealed so it’s unclear what charges each has pleaded guilty to and the terms of their individual sentencing hearings.
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A spokeswoman for the United States Attorney’s Office said the two are scheduled to be sentenced on March 10.
United States Attorney David Metcalf announced Mayerlyn Cordero’s guilty plea on Tuesday. She was charged by indictment and arrested in Florida on Feb. 26. She later was arraigned in federal court in Allentown on March 19.
Maranna J. Meehan of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, representing Mayerlyn Cordero, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
Authorities said the most recent case began when Jessenia Cordero was already serving time in a separate case.
Jessenia Cordero pleaded guilty in 2017 in the separate case to felony criminal conspiracy for filing fake federal tax returns. In that case, she used stolen social security numbers to net more than $4.3 million, then served her four-year sentence.
As that sentence was wrapping up, Jessenia Cordero gathered Mayerlyn Cordero and her husband in a new scheme to defraud the U.S. government’s Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. Both were established as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, a federal law enacted in March 2020—and the Internal Revenue Service.
Court records show the scheme began May 26, 2020—more than two weeks before Jessenia Cordero began her supervised release on June 11, 2020.
The married couple allegedly ran the scheme through their tax preparation service, JB Multiservices on North Eighth Street in Allentown, court records state.
In total, the pair filed 316 fraudulent federal tax returns using stolen identities, filed another 674 false tax returns and submitted 168 fraudulent pandemic-related unemployment claims, according to a news release from 2023 and court records.
They were accused at that time of stealing a combined $3.8 million. A superseding indictment filed in October 2024 now puts that figure at $5.5 million.
Mayerlyn Cordero admitted to conspiring with Baez and Jessenia Cordero to steal over $1 million in COVID funds by submitting 13 false applications from June 2020 through January 2021, court records say.
She also admitted to filing two fraudulent PPP loan applications under the name of her tax preparation business, May Tax.
This included materially false information that inflated the number of employees and included a false tax document, as well as a fraudulent EIDL application for May Tax that also falsely inflated the number of employees allegedly employed at the business.
In addition, Mayerlyn Cordero was responsible for filing false and fraudulent PPP applications in the names of other companies, R&P Trucking and KS Transport.
In total, she admitted to filing 23 fraudulent tax returns using stolen Personally Identifiable Information provided by a co-conspirator, despite knowing that the information she provided in support of these tax returns was false.
The case was investigated by FBI Philadelphia’s Allentown Resident Agency; IRS Criminal Investigation; and the Department of Labor Office of Inspector General. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney S. Chandler Harris.
Photo credit: sergeitokmakov/Pixabay
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