Estela Martinez was unsuccessful the first time she filed for bankruptcy in 2009, but the Dallas woman filed five more times between then and 2012, the Dallas Morning News reported yesterday. The feds took notice and charged her this month with bankruptcy fraud. It turns out that she omitted some key information from court filings during her failed attempts to make it through bankruptcy court in Dallas, such as her social security number, according to the May 21 indictment. Martinez also failed to disclose her previous bankruptcy filings, the indictment said. Martinez had a lawyer the first two times she filed, in 2009. After that, she filed on her own without an attorney, court records show. Each time, a bankruptcy judge dismissed her chapter 13 petitions because she failed to file certain required documents in time, such as a statement of current monthly income.
