TULSA — A woman convicted on 24 federal counts accusing her of defrauding banks and credit unions, plus four counts of identity theft, now faces trial on 42 federal charges of aiding and assisting in the preparation of falsified federal income tax returns.
Pamela Kathryn Conley, 60, of Catoosa was indicted by a federal grand jury in Tulsa in February 2021 of submitting credit applications containing bogus income and employment information to “enrich herself unlawfully by fraudulently obtaining loans” from 10 financial institutions.
As part of her scheme, Conley falsified and submitted documents to apply for approximately $1 million in loans. From those applications, she secured more than $800,000 in loan proceeds that gave her “access to cash, boats and cars to support her lifestyle,” U.S. Attorney Clint Johnson said.
Conley submitted forged earning statements suggesting that she held high-level positions at various companies and earned approximately $200,000 annually. Those claims were “all provably false,” Johnson said.
As an illustration, Conley submitted earnings statements that purportedly provided proof of her income from Resource Mortgage of Norman, Teachers Annuity Association, Genesis Capital and CFS2 Inc. However, those documents were forgeries.
She signed a document in November 2020 avowing that she had not been declared bankrupt in the preceding decade. However, Conley filed a Chapter 13 petition in April 2019, and that case was still pending in Oklahoma’s Eastern District Bankruptcy Court in Muskogee as of Feb. 2.
Conley also used personal identification of several employees of financial institutions to prepare fraudulent lien releases that she filed with the Oklahoma Tax Commission.
Conley pleaded guilty to all 28 charges in September 2022 in Tulsa’s Northern District federal court.
In a document dated Aug. 21, 2022, her attorney pleaded for some leniency in sentencing.
Conley’s husband died, leaving her with “substantial medical bills” that she was “unable to pay on her sole income.” His client was “a compulsive gambler” and was taking “a cornucopia” of prescription medications, he wrote. He also noted that she had been in pretrial detention since her arrest in February 2021, and her health had deteriorated during that time, he said.
Chief U.S. District Judge John F. Heil III sentenced Conley in November 2022 to four and a half years in federal prison: 30 months combined on the 24 bank fraud convictions, followed by 24 months combined for the ID theft convictions. Previously, Heil also approved a forfeiture judgment of $938,020 against Conley.
Conley appealed her prison sentence and the forfeiture ruling to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver on Dec. 2, 2022.
Yet on Sept. 22, 2021, she signed a federal court document which stated, among other things: “I know that the Court will not permit anyone to plead ‘GUILTY’ who maintains (s)he is innocent and, with that in mind, and because I am ‘GUILTY’ and do not believe I am innocent, I wish to plead ‘GUILTY,’ respectfully request the Court to accept my plea of ‘GUILTY,’ and to have the Clerk enter my plea of ‘GUILTY’” to all 28 counts.
Last October, while awaiting sentencing in Tulsa for bank fraud and ID theft, Conley was indicted in Muskogee’s Eastern District federal court on 42 counts of aiding and assisting in preparation of false income tax returns.
The indictment alleges she prepared 42 federal income tax returns for 15 individuals. Those returns contained false and fraudulent deductions for medical expenses, charitable contributions, casualty theft losses, real property and property taxes, mortgage-interest payments and job-related expenses, the indictment alleges.
The charges arose from an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service.
A jury trial in the case is scheduled for June 5.
Meanwhile, court records indicate Conley is confined in the Cimarron Correctional Facility at Cushing.