Alan B. Fabian was good at making money, and he was good at giving it away too. A former co-chair to the election committee of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, FEC data shows that since 2001 Fabian personally gave nearly $200,000 to party candidates and helped raise even more as a campaign “bundler.”

A photo of Fabian on the website of the non-profit group he founded shows a handsome, youthful man, with a stern fixed gaze that exudes confidence, the kind of guy you’d want on your side.

But while the 43-year-old accountant was busy raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for political hopefuls, he was also allegedly lining his own pockets with proceeds from a multimillion dollar sale/leaseback fraud.

The allegations led to Fabian’s recent resignation from the Romney campaign; but if federal prosecutors get their way, losing his political connections will be the least of Fabian’s worries.

A federal grand jury convened in August and filed charges of mail fraud, money laundering, bankruptcy fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice against Fabian, alleging he defrauded millions of dollars from a Georgia leasing company and several funding sources.

“This alleged multimillion dollar scheme is an egregious example of an individual who exploited legitimate business for his own selfish gain,” said William D. Chase, an FBI special agent in charge of the Fabian case.

If convicted, Fabian faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each of the nine counts of mail fraud; ten years in prison for each of the nine counts of money laundering and one count of obstruction of justice; and five years in prison for each of the two counts of bankruptcy fraud and two counts of perjury.

According to court records, the details of the fraud stretch back at least a decade, when — in 1996 — Fabian first launched Strategic Partners International (SPI), LLC. For four years, the company functioned as an information technology consulting firm — leasing its equipment from a Georgia-based equipment lessor known as Solarcom — until it was bought by a Virginia firm, Maximus, Inc., in 2000. Upon acquiring SPI, LLC, Maximus paid off the $134,272 in payments still owed to Solarcom.

But documents suggest that Fabian wasn’t done with his company just yet. He kept the company’s bank account open — 
unbeknownst to the new owners — until 2002, when he quietly incorporated Strategic Partners International, Inc. in Wyoming. By then, SPI, LLC had been dissolved into Maximus, where Fabian now worked as a division vice president. But if the allegations are true, it would appear most of Fabian’s work was conducted outside of the office, passing off his copycat company as a unit of Maximus.

According to the 23-count indictment, from March 2001 to July 2004, Fabian used his position with Maximus and that company’s good standing with Solarcom, to enter his new company, SPI, Inc., into a number of sale/leaseback deals with the lessor. Through Solarcom, Fabian was able to obtain financing from several funding sources, namely De Lage Landen, Key Equipment Finance and Fleet Business Services.

Prosecutors suspect it worked something like this: after Solarcom located a funding source, the company would purchase specified computer equipment from SPI and simultaneously lease it back. Solarcom then sold the rental stream to the funding source, thereby receiving the funds to pay SPI for the equipment.

According to the indictment, “Solarcom then mailed a check to SPI to purchase the equipment under the specified lease.” SPI then paid three months in lease fees to Solarcom, owing the rest to the funding source.

All the while, Solarcom was allegedly being duped. According to Rod J. Rosenstein, the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland who is prosecuting the case, Fabian made numerous misrepresentations to Solarcom and the funding sources to induce them to enter into the transactions, including false bills of sale, equipment addendums and other documents purporting to reflect that SPI had purchased computer equipment, when in fact it had not purchased such equipment, and thus did not have anything to sell and lease back.

Among them, according to the indictment, were a series of invoices from a shell company called SmartSoftware USA, which, it turns out, shared the same address as a non-profit organization run by Fabian.

What’s more, Fabian allegedly represented SPI, Inc. as a subsidiary of Maximus and executed corporate guaranties on behalf of his employer purporting to obligate Maximus to pay any debt owed by SPI from the sale-leaseback transactions.

Throughout this time, the indictment says, Fabian was getting rich. He reportedly diverted substantial amounts of cash provided to SPI by Solarcom for his personal benefit, including at least $500,000 to purchase real estate in North Carolina, $600,000 to pay for private jet travel and $3.9 million to form and operate the Centre for Management and Technology (CMAT), a not-for-profit entity located in Baltimore.

Fabian’s bosses at Maximus apparently knew nothing of their employee’s extracurricular activities — that is until July 2004, by which time Fabian and SPI had defaulted on all 11 leases. On July 14, Maximus filed a complaint in the Circuit Court of Maryland alleging numerous counts of fraud, conspiracy and breach of fiduciary duty against Fabian and a co-conspirator, John R. Hoffman — another Maximus employee.

“In secret, Fabian and Hoffman orchestrated an elaborate scheme to attempt to bind Maximus to $31 million in guarantees supporting the lease of IT equipment, which had no business relation to Maximus. Rather the IT equipment was ultimately for the use of SPI, Inc. and CMAT, two corporate entities owned and/or controlled by Fabian and/or Hoffman,” Maximus said in the complaint.

The Maryland court referred that case to arbitration pursuant to Fabian and Hoffman’s employment agreement with Maximus.

DLL and Fleet finally forced SPI, Inc. into bankruptcy in August 2004, but not before the damage had been done. All told, the government alleges Fabian’s fraud netted at least $32 million in ill-gotten gains.

And that was only the beginning of Fabian’s alleged lawbreaking. From June 2004 to at least January 2007, prosecutors say, Fabian engaged in a scheme to defraud the bankruptcy court and creditors of SPI in order to keep the proceeds of his mail fraud scheme out of reach of SPI’s creditors by creating false documents and giving false testimony.

Fabian is also alleged to have perjured himself in the course of two depositions in the SPI, Inc. bankruptcy case and is charged with obstructing justice by: falsely testifying before the bankruptcy court in December 2006 about transfers of funds he made from SPI to purchase real estate in North Carolina; filing false financial statements with the bankruptcy court on three occasions in 2004 and 2005; and influencing a business associate to provide false information to a forensic accountant retained by the bankruptcy trustee.

The indictment seeks forfeiture of $32 million in substitute assets, including eight properties in North Carolina and a property in Hunt Valley, MD; cash; a Silverton yacht; three vehicles; and Fabian’s interest in several companies.

In statements to the press, Fabian’s attorney, David Irwin, remained optimistic and said he looks forward to reaching some kind of deal with the government. If that’s not possible, he said, he looks forward to going to trial.