Category: Security

BOSTON – A Feeding Hills, Mass. woman has agreed to plead guilty in connection with an alleged scheme to defraud commercial lenders by providing false and fraudulent rent rolls and forged lease agreements for properties located in Springfield, Mass.; East Longmeadow, Mass.; and Enfield, Conn.

Christine Gendron, 59, has agreed to plead guilty to an Information charging her with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. A plea hearing has not yet been scheduled by the Court. In a related case, on April 22, 2025, Louis R. Masaschi pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and two counts of wire fraud. United States Judge Mark G. Mastroianni scheduled Masaschi’s sentencing for July 23, 2025.

According to court filings, Gendron was a certified public accountant who worked as the Financial Manager for JLL Realty Developers, LLC (JLLRD), a limited liability company for which her sister, Jeannette Norman, and brother-in-law, Masaschi, served as partners. Masaschi and, allegedly Norman, were partners in dozens of limited liability companies, including JLLRD, through which they owned primarily commercial and some residential property in Western Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere. It is alleged that Gendron conspired with Masaschi and Norman to defraud various financial institutions and a commercial lender.

Specifically, Masaschi and, allegedly, Gendron and Norman provided materially false, fictitious and fraudulent financial information – including false rent rolls and forged lease agreements – to obtain loans for their companies. After receiving the loans, Masaschi, Norman and their companies allegedly made some or no payments and ultimately defaulted on the loans, causing substantial losses to the financial institutions and commercial lenders.

According to Gendron’s plea agreement, between May 2016 and November 2018, Masaschi, and allegedly Norman, fraudulently obtained or sought to obtain approximately $60,123,000 in loans and caused a total loss of $19,305,473.  

The charge of conspiracy to commit bank fraud provides for a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $1 million or twice the gross gain or loss. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case.

United States Attorney Leah B. Foley and James Crowley, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven H. Breslow of the Springfield Branch Office is prosecuting the case.  

The details contained in the charging documents are allegations.  The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

I joined the FBI in 1999 in a clerical support position at the Seattle Division while I was still attending college. After graduating, I transferred to the Honolulu Division and worked as a financial analyst before entering the training academy to become a special agent. I have been with the FBI for 23 years, 12 years as a special agent.

What drew you to the FBI?

My aunt worked for the FBI in the Seattle Division and encouraged me to apply to a clerical position. I was only 19 at the time and decided to put in my application. I often joke that I grew up in the FBI, raised by FBI agents.

Who made a difference in your career? How?

I have been fortunate to work with so many fantastic colleagues during my career. One of the most influential is an assistant United States attorney that I work with in Honolulu. He has taught me so many professional skills and life lessons; I admire his patriotism and tenacity.  But one of the best things he has taught me is to have fun while working.  

Share the thing you’re most proud of from your FBI career.

Every day I am proud to represent the FBI. I feel very fortunate to work alongside amazing men and women who all come from different backgrounds but work toward the same mission of protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution.

The majority of my 13-year FBI career has been spent combating violent crimes in New Orleans and Jackson. I worked on the Violent Crime Task Force in New Orleans and was a SWAT operator, Behavioral Analysis Unit coordinator, legal advisor, and cruise ship coordinator.

After completing an 18-month assignment to the Human Resources Division, I was promoted to supervisory spent agent in Jackson. I currently supervise the Safe Streets Task Force, Violent Crime Task Force, Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, and Indian Country investigations. I am also a firearms instructor and physical fitness administrator.

What is the best career or life advice you have to give?  

Stay adaptable, because you can discover your true mission. When I joined the FBI, I wanted to be an attorney. However, I soon realized that I wanted to be an agent. My first office was New Orleans, where I worked violent crimes and violent crimes against children cases. I wanted to take my career further and became a SWAT operator. I then had the opportunity to go to Headquarters to see how that works. While I enjoyed my experience, my true interest was being directly involved in combating crime. My advice is to pursue what you love, and for me, that is investigating violent crime.

Share the thing you’re most proud of from your FBI career. 

I’m most proud of the people I’ve worked with and the opportunities I’ve been given. The FBI is like no other career, and I’m honored to say I’m a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I started my career with the FBI in May 2008.

My first assignment after Quantico was the Denver Division, Colorado Springs Resident Agency, where I have been lucky enough to stay. I worked national security for the first three years and have worked violent crime ever since. I am also a member of the Denver Division’s Evidence Response Team and a Behavioral Analysis Unit coordinator.

Describe your most memorable case or investigative success.

The case I consider my biggest success was a particularly heinous domestic violence incident that occurred on the Fort Carson military base. The victim was a female service member, and her husband was a civilian, so the case was ours. The husband had beaten his wife, who was pregnant, numerous times over the course of three days. After repeated beatings, the wife escaped the house, but their 1-year-old daughter was still in the residence. The husband called the wife threatening the child, and the wife could hear the child crying in the background, so she finally called the police.

My interview with the wife revealed they had been married for four years and he had been beating her the entire time. We arrested the husband and placed him in federal custody. The judge ordered the husband to have no contact with the victim, but he began contacting her almost immediately and pressuring her to change her story. As time went by, the victim became cooperative with the husband and assisted him in his efforts to hide their contact. Nonetheless, we were able to get all of the calls between them and with some additional investigation, were able to prove it was the husband and wife communicating. All of the extra work allowed us to add witness tampering to the list of charges against the husband.

I entered the FBI Academy in March 1998. I was first assigned to the Washington Field Office, where I worked national security matters and white-collar crime, including espionage, health care fraud, and corporate and securities fraud. While in Washington, I served as a member of the original HazMat evidence response team.

I then transferred to Sacramento, where I worked health care fraud and supported the SWAT team. I then spent time at FBI Headquarters preparing the Director’s briefing materials for domestic and international engagements and then in the Las Vegas Division addressing a large mortgage fraud caseload. I was then promoted to supervise the IT staff and cyber threat analysts at the Internet Crime Complaint Center in West Virginia. I have been serving as a supervisory special agent in Springfield since 2017 and currently oversee cyber, human intelligence, and other efforts.

Describe your most memorable case or investigative success. 

My most memorable case was the opportunity to work on the Robert Hanssen investigation. I was in charge of reviewing all of the electronic evidence in the case and was the first to see notable information about his dead drops and letters to the Russians.  

The beauty of the FBI is that it takes you places you would never expect. I’ve worked in Maersk’s headquarters in Norfolk when its ship, the Alabama, was hijacked by Somali pirates. Years later, when I was serving as a public affairs officer in New York, I was invited to the premier of a movie about the incident.

I’ve followed an espionage subject in Asia; shared a meal with a convicted al Qaeda terrorist in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and attended more than 30 congressional briefings on the 2012  Benghazi attack.

In 2020, I spent almost 200 days managing civil unrest in Seattle. Along with my team, we uncovered the movements of a racially motivated violent extremist group that covered four continents. Before joining the FBI, I was the assistant district attorney in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and I worked as a child advocate who envisioned a world safe for kids to grow up, free of violence.  

Who made a difference in your career? How? 

The FBI Philadelphia recruiter who convinced me I was “FBI material.” He sought me out at a career fair where I was representing the district attorney’s office. He challenged my perception of what an FBI agent looked like and changed the course of my life.

I never considered this as a path for myself. I was the first person in my family to go to college and practically raised myself. Being an FBI agent was the furthest thing from my mind. But my life is so much more incredible than I ever could have imagined. I remain in contact with my recruiter to this day. Thank you, Jeffrey Covington!