Pinellas Man Sentenced to Almost Six Years in Prison for Fraud

A U.S. District Judge in Tampa sentenced a Pinellas County man to 57 months in federal prison last week for mail fraud and tax fraud. Joseph Christopher Hooker of Tierra Verde was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $2,478,423.98 to Roger William Erdelac, owner of a company called Blue Hawaiian Products, and $ 819,426 to the Internal Revenue Service.

Hooker had pleaded guilty in October 2009 but was not sentenced until last week.

According to federal prosecutors, Hooker and a man named Jack Shaw executed a scheme from approximately 2002 to November 2006 to defraud Blue Hawaiian Products, which is a company that manufactured and sold fiberglass swimming pool shells. Prosecutors claim, in court documents, that Hooker acquired customer checks that had been sent by private and interstate carriers (the interstate travel of the funds brings the fraud into the purview of the federal courts instead of the state courts) and made payable to his employer, Blue Hawaiian Products.

Shaw allegedly opened a business checking account in the name of Blue Hawaiian Pools and Supplies into which the checks were deposited. Hooker then prepared fraudulently altered Blue Hawaiian invoices reflecting substantially lower purchase prices than the true invoices and Shaw purchased cashier checks for the lower prices from the fraudulent account and remitted them to Blue Hawaiian Products in payment of the fraudulent invoice.

Shaw and Hooker then retained the difference between the amounts of the original checks and the lower, fraudulently invoiced amounts. Because Hooker did not report those funds to the federal government as income, he also faced tax charges.

Hooker omitted the proceeds of the fraud scheme from his 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 Federal Individual Income Tax Returns. This allowed the federal authorities to charge him with tax fraud in addition to mail fraud related to the interception of checks and falsification of invoices.