A former marketing employee of a Hollywood business was arrested in a brazen fraud scheme that bilked the company out of more than $63,000, authorities said.
George Luis Leyva, 35, was arrested Sunday on charges including grand theft, money laundering, and defrauding a financial institution, Broward jail records showed.
According to an arrest report, the owner of Hot Gold Fish Corporation, a custom pop art portrait business, told police they’d hired Leyva as a marketing employee in April 2023.
Shortly after Leyva was hired, he set up payments with new marketing agencies and arranged for the business to pay the marketing agencies tens of thousands of dollars, the report said.
It turned out Leyva owned the marketing agencies himself and collected payments of over $63,000, the report said.
The owner of Hot Gold Fish said Leyva presented the companies as ones he had used previously for marketing, not companies that actually belonged to him, the report said.
In addition, the owner said Leyva was also creating copies of the company’s art images and had built a website similar to the company’s site, the report said.
Leyva was fired on June 5, 2023, and the next day, the website Leyva had created was taken down, the report said.
Leyva was booked into jail where he remained held on a $50,000 bond on Monday, records showed.