Indicted Baltimore city official continues to work at high-level government job
Kara DiPietro became operating chief of fleet management, a $96 million division of Baltimore government, despite a history of not paying business loans and bankruptcy. Earlier this month, she was indicted for fraudulently obtaining $2.8 million in PPP loans.
Above: Baltimore Department of General Services welcomes Kara DiPietro as deputy chief of administration – since promoted to deputy chief of operations – at fleet management. (Instagram)
Baltimore City continues to employ, as operations chief of its fleet management service, a person federally charged with fleecing banks for $2.8 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even before Kara A. DiPietro was indicted on October 8 by a Baltimore federal grand jury on six bank fraud counts, the 49-year-old former businesswoman was the subject of multiple contested loans, tax judgments and bitter bankruptcy battles involving companies she had operated.
In a U.S. Bankruptcy Court filing last month, lawyers for the State Employees’ Credit Union of Maryland (SECU) said that, “like a chameleon, Ms. DiPietro manipulated the figures of her assets and liabilities to be larger or smaller depending on what would benefit the most” in obtaining a $400,000 SECU loan for one of the three companies she controlled in 2021. All three companies went bankrupt.
Over the same period, DiPietro was enmeshed – first as a loan recipient, then as a government witness – in a Ponzi scheme by a well-known fraudster in Philadelphia involving high-interest loans to small businesses.
The Par Funding operation, which led to a 2024 threat against DiPietro “to split your head open” for nonpayment of a loan, resulted in the conviction and jailing of Joseph LaForte and his “enforcer” brother, Jimmy LaForte.
Despite these and other red flags readily found in public records, the Baltimore Department of General Services (DGS) hired DiPietro in April 2025 as the $130,000-a-year deputy chief for fleet management. Five days after her hire, she was hit by a $15,289 tax lien judgment by the Maryland Comptroller, according to state court records.
Fleet management is by far the largest division in General Services. The division has a $96 million budget and will borrow $39 million this year to replace about 250 vehicles under the city’s Master Lease Program. The program was once dominated by J.P. Grant, who secretly bankrolled former Mayor Catherine Pugh’s second Ashburton house and 2 Chic Boutique business.
DiPietro’s job involves managing the municipal fleet of over 5,000 vehicles, approving hundreds of parts and service contracts, supervising four primary fueling stations, and overseeing a sprawling maintenance facility on East Biddle Street that has had its share of scandals involving its former fleet manager, Robert W. Gibson, and its former fleet superintendent, Rob Schley.
• What’s next for Pugh’s $150,000 backer, J.P. Grant? (12/3/19)
• Idle snow plows and classic cars: Why Baltimore’s fleet manager was retired (7/29/20)
• Another chapter in the book of bad practices at Fleet Management (9/1/20)
In a now-deleted LinkedIn entry, DiPietro boasted that she “frequently represents the agency alongside Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration at civic events.”
On social media, Kara DiPietro hyped companies that quickly proved unsustainable. Kinetic Capital, established by DiPietro in 2019, received $40,260 in fraudulent PPP loans in 2020 and 2021, according to federal prosecutors, before filing for bankruptcy. BELOW: List of 16 PPP loan applications made by DiPietro, eight of which (in green) were funded by banks. (LinkedIn, 10/8/26 federal indictment)
No Comment
Scott’s press secretary declined to comment on DiPietro’s federal indictment or disclose her current job status. “The Mayor’s Office will not comment on personnel matters at this time,” the office responded via email yesterday.
DGS and DiPietro have not yet responded to email messages and telephone calls that requested a response by late yesterday.
Berke Attila, current interim director of transportation who hired DiPietro in 2025 while DGS director, told The Brew, “I believe your questions are being handled by DGS leadership and communication team.”
The federal grand jury charged DiPietro with submitting “false statements, misrepresentations and omissions” on 16 PPP loan applications across the four businesses she then controlled – HMC Inc., H.M.C. Inc, Holdings and Kinetic Capital LLC.
She secured eight loans from four different banks between May 2020 and March 2021, worth just under $2.8 million, and used the proceeds “for expenses not permissible under the PPP,” including renovations to her home, the indictment charges.
DiPietro’s father, Gerald Dzurek, founded H.M.C. in 1989 as a custom-design woodworking outfit based in Columbia. After more than a decade as an elementary school teacher and director of philanthropic advancement at the Living Classrooms Foundation in Baltimore, she bought the company in 2015.
In 2017, the Small Business Administration named her Maryland’s “Small Business Person of the Year,” an honor she would repeatedly tout in future years.
In 2019, DiPietro created Holdings Management Company, which absorbed H.M.C.’s operations and employees, and Kinetic Capital, which advertised itself in Fells Point and elsewhere as a lender of money to small businesses who can’t get conventional bank loans or need immediate cash.
She pitched Kinetic Capital this way: “Cashflow is the kinetic energy of a business, propelling the business forward and creating positive momentum. In the same way, we believe have a responsibility to keep the wheels of the local economy in motion by supporting small business owners.”
Kara DiPietro promotes her 2017 SBA “Small Business Person of the Year” award. HMC fraudulently obtained $2,085,135 in PPP loans before it went bankrupt in 2023, according to federal prosecutors. BELOW: An online self-description of her accomplishments.
Rewriting History
Kinetic Capital, Holdings Management and her other companies entered bankruptcy in August 2023 under crushing debt to suppliers and multi-million-dollar loans from American Express National Bank, Newtek Bank, the Howard County Economic Development Authority and SECU. Three months earlier, DiPietro filed for personal bankruptcy.
Revisions in her LinkedIn resume entries essentially erased this 2019-23 period of outstanding loans, angry unpaid suppliers, and bankruptcy.
Instead, she rewrote the record by stressing her credentials as an award-winning entrepreneur and her philanthropic efforts, noting, for example, that she formed the nonprofit (and now-defunct) Kinetic Capital Community Foundation “to transform mindsets and drive economic growth and equality through the application of ‘econo-physics.’”
She also highlights the relatively short period (roughly December 2023-January 2025) she worked at Global Mechanical, a Sykesville-based installer of HVAC, plumbing and refrigeration services.
Baltimore’s Administrative Manual requires mandatory pre-employment criminal background checks for all incoming employees. General Services has not responded to questions about how DiPietro passed the background check, while the mayor’s office has declined to comment on “personnel matters.”
Since being hired by DGS in April 2025, DiPietro has been required to file two financial disclosure forms to the city Ethics Board.
Neither document mentions her past businesses or her ongoing financial difficulties.
Under the penalty of perjury, she states on the forms that she sits on no company boards that do business with the city, accepts no gifts from entities that do business with the city, has no debt to persons or entities regulated by the city, and has no family members that are employed by the city.
• To reach a reporter: reuttermark@yahoo.com