The owner of a credit repair business located in the City of Bell pleaded guilty today to 13 felony counts related to a complex identity theft scheme, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced today.

Guillermo Leyes (dob 11/7/72) pleaded to 12 counts of identity theft and one count of attempted identity theft and admitted a special allegation that the loss in case BA464742 exceeded $100,000.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rand Rubin immediately sentenced Leyes to 10 years in state prison.

Deputy District Attorney Warren Kato of the District Attorney's Community Cyber Investigation Response Team said the defendant owned FTC Credit Solutions. During 2014 and 2015, the company fraudulently generated and submitted false claims of identity theft to Transunion, Equifax and Experian in an effort to improve customer credit scores, the prosecutor said.

In many cases, fake police reports also were submitted with the false claims. In March 2015, the Federal Trade Commission served a temporary restraining order on the business for portraying itself as a branch of the Federal Trade Commission and for deceiving and defrauding customers, the prosecutor added.

The Federal Trade Commission subsequently filed a federal civil lawsuit and obtained a monetary judgment against Leyes in the amount of $2.4 million.

In May 2018, two co-defendants in the case, Jimena Perez (dob 11/6/90) and Guadalupe Gonzalez (dob 10/18/89), each pleaded guilty to three felony counts of identity theft.

The case was investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's North Identity Theft Task Force which includes investigators from the Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Los Angeles District Attorney / case BA464742  / July 23, 2018