Durham lawyer gets prison time for fraud scheme that paid for BMW, beach home
A Durham attorney charged with bank fraud in a scheme to pay for cosmetic surgery, a BMW and several properties was sentenced to over five years in prison, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina said Wednesday.
Tiffany Dawn Russell pleaded guilty in January to trying to obtain $2.5 million from at least 12 financial institutions and the United States Small Business Administration by fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
She was sentenced to 63 months Wednesday for her role in a fraud conspiracy as well as 36 months for filing a false tax return. The sentences will be served concurrently, according to a news release.
Russell was ordered to forfeit more than $2 million in money earned through the scheme.
“This defendant spent years defrauding banks and the federal government, and now she’ll be spending years behind bars,” said U.S. Attorney Michael Easley in a news release. “As Judge (James) Dever noted at sentencing, this was more than a one-off mistake, it was a multitude of bad decisions by an attorney who knew better. This fraud scheme is even more egregious because the defendant falsely obtained more than $1 million in COVID-relief funds intended to help legitimate, hard-working business owners weather the pandemic.”
She practiced law in Durham and Greensboro as part of her law firm, TDRLEGAL. The firm practiced business law and criminal law, among other things, according to the firm’s website. She was disbarred Jan. 21, the day after she pleaded guilty, according to N.C. Lawyers Weekly.
The scheme goes back several years and includes an array of purchases on lavish items, including a beach home, plastic surgery and a BMW.
She and others also obtained over a $1 million in loans from the federal government’s CARES Act that was earmarked for emergency pandemic assistance. Easley said she using fraudulent information about her business and spent the money on “personal interests.”
In 2016, Russell and two other defendants in the original indictment applied for loans and credit cards using aliases and other false information. They created fake identities to open new credit lines and to buy things without the intention of ever paying for them, the news release said.
Russell spent $13,000 of the fraudulently obtained money on butt augmentation surgery in 2016, The News & Observer’s reported previously. Russell also used false information when seeking nearly $29,000 to buy a BMW, according to court documents.
Russell was indicted in November 2020 for conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, access device fraud and misuse of a social security number.
The fraud involved fabricated documents to buy three properties, including a Nags Head beach home.
Her charges include a scheme to remove legitimate debt accounts from her credit history by lying that she was the victim of identity theft and had not opened those accounts — in turn allowing her credit score to improve.
Those illicit proceeds allowed her to pay off personal debts and buy five more properties in North Carolina, Maryland and Alabama.
The COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force, established in May 2020, assisted the Department of Justice in the case.
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