“Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Phaedra Parks’s husband, Apollo Nida, was arrested Friday on charges of bank fraud and identity theft.
There has been some dispute regarding whether or not police actually came to arrest Nida or if he turned himself in.
According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Nida allegedly created several fake companies to gain access to various databases that he used to steal a vast amount of information from people.
He then allegedly used that information to open fake bank accounts in the victims’ names and snagged their U.S. Treasury checks, retirement checks from several Delta Airline employees and checks for some of the victims’ unclaimed tax money, the report said.
Nida is currently out on $250,000 pre-trial bond but is scheduled to be back in court on Feb. 12 for a preliminary hearing.
Nida’s alleged partner in crime was also arrested and she reportedly has said she’s not interested in protecting the reality-TV star.
Gayla St. Julien, a woman identified as Nida’s aid in the scheme, was arrested in September and allegedly had $3 million in various bank accounts linked to her. She said that the $3 million she received from the scheme is only “scraps” compared to the huge amounts of cash that Nida raked in.
St. Julien’s part in the alleged scheme was to pretend to be the victims so she could open the bank accounts in their names. She would then deposit fraudulent checks into the accounts .
Nida is also accused of running another scheme involving a fake car dealership.
Reports say Nida reportedly opened a fake auto dealership and applied for auto loans in the names of some of the stolen identities, which allegedly allowed him to pull in way more cash than his sidekick.
This isn’t the first time Nida has been caught up in a messy fraud scheme.
From 2004 to 2009, he served time for auto-title fraud and he is still on probation for those charges.
Neither Nida nor Parks have commented publicly on the charges, and it’s not clear if Parks, an attorney, will be stepping up to represent her husband in court. The couple married in 2009.
