Yesterday Real Housewives of Atlanta star Phaedra Parks' husband Apollo Nida pleaded guilty to mail fraud, wire fraud, and bank fraud in the U.S. District Court of Georgia [click here if you missed that].
Throwing himself on the mercy of the court Apollo apologized for his actions and blamed his behavior on the pressure to keep up with his reality show lifestyle…
Rodney Ho from the AJC reports from inside the courtroom,
[Apollo] did provide some context for his actions. In 2009, Nida had just left prison after five years for federal racketeering charges related to auto title fraud. He and Parks married and she soon signed on to be part of “Real Housewives of Atlanta.”
He said she was making far more money than him and he felt pressure to keep up. (He cited a $600,000 contract for her but didn’t say how long that was supposed to last.) Without easy legitimate ways to make quick money, he opted for this illegal scheme instead. But he claimed to her he was running a legitimate debt recovery firm and kept her firmly in the dark.
He said he even had a nervous breakdown at one point over the pressures to “sustain a lifestyle” befitting of a reality show star. And once he started the scheme, he found it difficult to stop. “I got sucked in and engulfed and lost sight of things,” he said.
Nida said he often didn’t think about whether this was hurting anybody because he was primarily targeting private businesses and the government, not individuals. And in the case of unclaimed property, what were the odds these folks would ever claim them?
An attempt to open a legal halfway house fell through, he said, because he was on probation for his prior conviction. “It’s my fault at the end of the day,” he said.
