(Coeur D’Alene, ID) Douglas Worman, 64, of Coeur d’Alene was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for his convictions for engaging in a scheme to defraud J.S. Richards Forestry Management out of more than $2.5 million, U.S. Attorney Josh Hurwit announced today. A federal jury convicted Worman of 17 counts of wire fraud relating to his factoring scheme after a six-day trial in August 2024.
According to court records and evidence presented at trial, Worman owned and operated Worman Forest Management, a Coeur d’Alene-area forestry management company. In 2010, Worman, through his company, entered into a factoring agreement with J.S. Richards Forestry Management to sell millions of dollars of Worman Forest Management’s accounts receivable that were based on invoices for work the business had provided to its customers. Factoring is a form of short-term financing in which a business sells its accounts receivable to a third-party at a discount. In a factoring transaction, the seller of an invoice obtains immediate funding from a buyer, and the buyer of an invoice earns a fee for providing the up-front financing.
According to court records, beginning in at least 2015 and continuing through September 2018, Worman submitted inflated and entirely false and fraudulent invoices to J.S. Richards Forestry Management for factoring, purportedly for work Worman’s business had performed for its customers. Between June and September 2018, Worman submitted more than $2 million in false and fraudulent invoices for factoring to J.S. Richards Forestry Management. Those invoices claimed to be for actual work performed by Worman Forest Management for its customers, but, in reality, the invoices were for amounts that were inflated and entirely fictitious. As a result of Worman’s fraud scheme, Worman fraudulently obtained at least $2.5 million from J.S. Richards Forestry Management.
Chief U.S. District Judge David C. Nye also sentenced Worman to three years of supervised release and ordered that Worman pay restitution in an amount to be determined at a later date.
“This case sends a clear message that, along with our law enforcement partners, we will not tolerate fraud in Idaho’s business community,” said U.S. Attorney Hurwit. “I am grateful for the FBI’s painstaking investigation of the defendant’s fraud and the tenacious work of our office’s prosecutors to marshal the evidence for the jury.”
“Douglas Worman is being held accountable for exploiting the trust of his victims,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Albert Kelly of the Salt Lake City FBI. “The FBI is committed to protecting Idahoans by investigating and arresting those who seek to defraud others. We also encourage the public to report potential fraud to the FBI.”
U.S. Attorney Hurwit commended the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which led to the charges. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brittney Campbell and Sean Mazorol prosecuted this case.