A Virginia couple accused of forging the wife’s grandfather’s signature on more than a dozen bogus student loan applications worth nearly a quarter million dollars were sentenced in federal court for their crime.
Brian Salyer, 33, and his wife, Miranda, 30, both of Lebanon, Va., pleaded guilty in March to separate charges related to the student loan plot, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia. Brian Salyer was convicted in U.S. District Court of one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. He was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison. Miranda Salyer pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud. She was sentenced to four months in federal prison. They will pay more than $206,000 in restitution.
U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Brian McGinn said Miranda Salyer’s grandfather agreed to co-sign for one student loan, intended for her to actually pay for school. Instead, her husband forged the grandfather's signature on 15 additional loan applications, between 2004 and 2007, submitted to lenders in Colorado, Massachusetts, Florida and New York. They used information from the grandfather’s driver’s license without his knowledge.
The forged applications netted pay outs of more than $206,000 in cash.
McGinn said Brian Salyer forged the signatures, leading to his charge of aggravated identity theft. That conviction is an automatic two years added to a sentence.
