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'Real Housewives Of Atlanta' husband Apollo Nida gets prison for fraud

Reality - Eight Years in Prison for Bank Fraud



Apollo Nida, the hubby of The Real Housewives of Atlanta star Phaedra Parks was just sent to jail for 8 years on July 8. He had plead guilty to bank fraud and ID theft back in May and only has to serve a fraction of the maximum time for his crimes. He was busted last year by the Feds for conspiring along with some cohorts to cash U.S. Treasury checks, pension fund checks from Delta Airlines, funneling the monies through bank accounts using over 50 stolen identities and filing fake tax returns among other things.

Part of the reason he only got 8 years in prison is that he made a deal with federal investigators. This will not be Apollo’s first stint in jail. He was released from state prison after serving six years for a car theft scheme. But he had begged the court to lower his maximum jail time for this fraud charges that could have sent him away for 30 years.

“A criminal history category of V substantially overstates the seriousness of Mr. Nida’s criminal past, thus warranting a departure from the Guidelines range,” Apollo’s attorneys successfully pleaded on his behalf. “Mr. Nida’s lengthy but early small-time criminal history is simply not in the same league as the ‘violent offenders, drug kingpins and perpetrators of far more serious offenses’ that Criminal History Category V was designed to address.”

Real Housewives of Atlanta Hubby To Big House Again

“The government did what they had to do,” Nida told the press at the downtown federal courthouse in Georgia. “Whatever the judge gave,” he said when asked about his feelings on the sentence handed down to him.

But his thoughts on his wife are much clearer. “I think Phaedra, in a perfect world, should be supportive as a wife should be…But if she chooses to derail from the plan, then that’s what she chooses to do,” he told an Atlanta radio station in May. “Whatever’s been thrown at me, I deal with it. I would like to say I would want her to stay around and do what a wife should do. But tomorrow’s not promised.”

Nida, who appears on the reality TV series with Parks, was arrested in January and pleaded guilty in May to charges in a fraud scheme that federal prosecutors say stole millions of dollars from at least 50 people over four years.

A hearing on July 17 will determine how much restitution Nida must pay to his victims.

Nida, 35, must serve five years under parole supervision after he completes his eight years in a federal prison, U.S. District Court Judge Charles A. Pannell, Jr. ordered during sentencing Tuesday.

It will be the second prison stint for Nida, who previously served five years in a federal prison for auto title fraud before marrying Parks in 2009.

Nida created two fake collection companies to gather personal information used to steal victims' identities, U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said after his sentencing in Atlanta. He used the information to get fraudulent auto loans in the names of his victims, according to the criminal complaint.

He was busted after a year-long investigation by the U.S. Secret Service.

"Today's sentencing exemplifies impartial justice regardless of economic class or perceived celebrity status," U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Reginald Moore said. "Nida's sentence should be an eye-opener for other like-minded criminals who scheme to steal victims' identities, defraud them and ignore the consequences of their actions."

The break in the case came in September, when federal investigators arrested Gayla St. Julein, a woman who "described herself as Nida's 'right hand b****' in executing the legwork of his fraud schemes," the complaint said.

St. Julien, who previously served prison time for identity theft, told agents that Nida "only paid her 'scraps'" for her work, compared to the amount of money he made from the fraud schemes," the filing said.

She turned on him and agreed to let agents record their phone calls, it said.

Nida "knowingly and willfully (did) execute and attempt to execute a scheme to defraud federally insured financial institutions by depositing stolen and fraudulently obtained checks and fraudulently obtained auto loan proceeds into bank accounts opened in the stolen identities of real persons, and conspire with others to do so, and knowingly convert to his use and the use of others stolen and fraudulently obtained United States Treasury Checks," Special Agent Alexandre Herrera said in a sworn affidavit.

Nida's fake companies fraudulently signed up with "LexisNexis, Equifax, and Mircrobilt databases" to steal personal information on people.

Along with the fraudulent auto loan checks, Nida stole U.S. Treasury checks, "retirement checks issued to Delta Airlines employees, and checks in the names of real people that were owed unclaimed property from various state and federal government agencies," the complaint said.

Agents recorded phone calls St. Julien made to Nida during which he discussed details of pending fraudulent auto loans and "details of future auto loan checks that he was expecting to receive any day now from in the mail," the affidavit said.