A Wilmington, N.C. resident was arrested Monday on federal charges that he’d submitted a fraudulent, multi-million dollar claim to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill compensation program.
In an indictment unsealed in Washington, D.C., Michael R. Rosella was charged with one count of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering. Prosecutors say the 45-year-old Rosella, who lived in Washington, D.C. in 2010, submitted a claim for $2.3 million to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, the entity that formerly handled claims for those injured by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
According to the Justice Department, Rosella allegedly submitted the claim on behalf of a fictitious entity called the Bayou Barataria Sportsmen’s Resort. Rosella allegedly represented the Resort has having been been a successful hotel and sport fishing business in Louisiana immediately before the spill, and to have suffered lost profits due to the spill’s impact on the Gulf of Mexico.
The documents submitted by Rosella allegedly included false affidavits of the Resort’s “owners,” federal tax filings, state sales tax records, financial statements, and invoices, according to the Justice Department.
In the nine-page indictment, the D.C. grand jury alleges that Rosella in early July, 2010, approximately three months after the oil spill, registered Bayou Barataria Resorts as a corporation. Rosella allegedly then submitted claims totaling $2,335,807.
“The Resort and its purported principals...were fictitious,” the indictment alleges, “and the documents submitted to the GCCF concerning the Resort's purported business, profits, sales, income, and taxes, were false and fraudulent.”
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