COEUR D’Alene, Idaho — A federal jury convicted Douglas Worman, a Coeur d’Alene man, of 17 counts of wire fraud.
According to court records, Worman, 63, owned and operated Worman Forest Management, a forestry management company based in the Coeur d’Alene area. In 2010, through his company, Worman entered into a factoring agreement with J.S. Richards Forestry Management to sell millions of dollars in Worman Forest Management’s accounts receivable based on invoices for work the business had done for its customers.
Factoring is a form of short-term financing where a business sells its accounts receivable to a third party at a discount. The seller of an invoice receives immediate funding from the buyer, who earns a fee for providing the financing.
Court records reveal that, from at least 2015 until September 2018, Worman submitted inflated and entirely false invoices to J.S. Richards Forestry Management for factoring. Between June and September 2018 alone, Worman submitted more than $2 million in fraudulent invoices. These invoices, which claimed to be for actual work performed by Worman Forest Management, were inflated and fictitious. As a result of this fraud scheme, Worman fraudulently obtained at least $1.5 million from J.S. Richards Forestry Management.
Worman is scheduled to be sentenced on December 10 at the federal courthouse in Coeur d’Alene. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison for each count.
