By Rick Pezzullo—
A nurse practitioner from Elmsford who stole the identities of 12 medical doctors and orchestrated an $11.2 million disability loan fraud scheme was sentenced this week in federal court to five years in prison.
According to Danielle Sassoon, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and information released in court, from June 2017 to March 2022, Catherine Seemer, 44, orchestrated a scheme to cause the fraudulent discharge of millions of dollars’ worth of student loans for borrowers who did not qualify for relief under the federal Total and Permanent Disability Discharge Program and its private analogue.
As part of the scheme, Seemer deceived more than 125 borrowers into believing they qualified for various forms of student loan relief and charged them fees to facilitate their loan discharge process. She then used the personal identifying information of the unsuspecting borrowers to submit fraudulent applications for student loan discharge on the basis of non-existent permanent physical and mental disabilities.
In support of these applications, Seemer used the stolen identities, medical license numbers, and forged signatures of more than a dozen medical doctors to falsify medical diagnoses and disability certifications. The scheme resulted in the wrongful discharge of approximately $11.2 million in loans under the disability-based relief programs.
“Today, Catherine Seemer has been held accountable for defrauding a federal loan forgiveness program created to help ease the financial burden of those who suffer from permanent physical or mental disabilities, including military veterans who endure service-related disabilities,” Sassoon stated. “Seemer used the stolen identities of a dozen medical doctors to falsify disabilities and cause more than $11.2 million in loans to be fraudulently discharged. This office remains dedicated to rooting out fraud and abuse of taxpayer-funded government programs.”
In addition to the prison term, Seemer was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $635,352.
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