“You — you asked me to open a company, and I said ‘yes?”’ … I have no clue what you’re talking about, Omar.” The man on the phone with Omar Spahi in March 2020 was in a panic. His best friend, Omar, had called to warn that he might start receiving phone calls from lawyers about a construction company named Progressive. Apparently, the company was in the man's name. But he had never heard of it.
The man didn’t think much of the company until 2020, when he received an ominous call from Omar. “Omar goes on to tell me that him and his father used my name and information to start a company and that for the last 10 years they have been embezzling money from the Ocean Towers apartment building through this company in my name,” the letter read, echoing allegations in the criminal case.