Pinellas Scientists Sentenced in $10.6 Million Fraud Scheme

Two Belleair Beach scientists have been sentenced to more than a decade in prison after prosecutors landed convictions against them in an elaborate scheme to steal millions from the federal government.

The sentencing of Mahmoud “Matt” Aldissi and Anastassia Bogomolova was announced Friday. Aldissi was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, while Bogomolova was sentenced to 13.

The two were convicted on an array of charges in March, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and falsification of records. Federal prosecutors said the pair used their businesses – Fractal Systems and Smart Polymers Research Corp., to gain more than $10 million in small business research grants from the federal government.

“In order to be awarded contracts, they submitted proposals using the stolen identities of real people to create false endorsements of and for their proposed contracts,” a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida, stated. “In the proposals, they also lied about their facilities, costs, the principal investigator on some of the contracts, and certifications in the proposals.”

U.S. District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington also ordered the two to pay $10.6 million in restitution.

The case was jointly investigated by a number of federal agencies, including the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Office of the Inspector General, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division.

“Through their repeated lies, falsification of records, and other illegal practices, these individuals fraudulently obtained millions of taxpayer dollars intended to advance new technologies,” Allison Lerner, inspector general at the National Science Foundation, was quoted in the statement as saying. “I commend our law enforcement and prosecution partners whose diligent efforts led to today’s sentencing.”

Both Fractal Systems and Smart Polymers Research have active websites. Both say the Belleair Beach-based companies, have closed down. The Smart Polymers website says the company used “smart’ or stimuli-responsive natural and synthetic polymers for the detection of biological substances.” The company was reportedly a spinoff of Fractal Systems.

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