The former owner of La Cremaillere, a restaurant in Banksville, has been sentenced to two years in federal prison in connection with a scheme to defraud the restaurant’s lenders, a mortgagee, bankruptcy creditors and customers and to obstruct the bankruptcy process, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) announcement attributed to Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss.
Barbara Meyzen was sentenced in White Plains Federal Court by U.S. District Judge Vincent L. Briccetti. She had previously pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud.
According to the Strauss announcement, from August 2015 to July 2016, Meyzen submitted credit applications that contained bank statements that had been changed to remove references to bounced checks and other negative information. She also created a false document regarding satisfaction of a mortgage and filed it with the Westchester County Clerk’s Office. When questioned by the FBI, Meyzen denied those actions.
She also created an email account in the name of a bank officer and sent a email using that person’s name to a lender.
Strauss added that throughout the summer of 2017, Meyzen charged more than $148,979 in restaurant and personal expenses to credit card accounts of two of the restaurant’s customers.
According to information in the announcement, Meyzen filed bankruptcy petitions for Meyzen Family Realty Associates LLC, which owned the real property from which the restaurant operated, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains in September 2018. She filed a bankruptcy petition for La Cremaillere Restaurant Corp., which operated the restaurant, in April 2019.
In May 2019, Meyzen misled the office of the United States Trustee, which oversees bankruptcy cases, about insurance coverage on the restaurant property.
The announcement cited documentation that Meyzen caused her bankruptcy counsel to give the United States Trustee and an attorney for Meyzen Family Realty’s largest creditor documents indicating that the property was insured when, in fact, she knew that the insurance coverage had been canceled months earlier for nonpayment.
In June 2019, Meyzen falsely testified under oath in a deposition conducted by the U.S. Trustee that she was not aware that the insurance had been canceled when she caused her attorney to turn the documents over to the Trustee, according to some of the details provided by the DOJ.
It also said that Meysen misused $20,000 in advances on the restaurant’s future credit card revenues, paying personal expenses with some of that money.
In addition to the prison term, Briccetti ordered Meyzen to serve two years of supervised release, and to pay forfeiture and restitution each in the amount of $320,289.35.
Meyzen is 57 years old and is a resident of Redding, Connecticut.
Strauss praised the investigative work of FBI special agents and the criminal investigators of the Office of Internal Affairs, New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. The prosecution of the case was handled by the office”™s White Plains division, with Assistant U. S. Attorney James McMahon in charge of the prosecution.
