In January, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of California obtained the first settlement in a Paycheck Protection Program civil enforcement case, against an online retailer called SlideBelts Inc. The release states that, In exchange for a fee, My Buddy Loans took personal identifying information from victims and promised to file an application for an agricultural grant, which they said was available to those who owned a few acres of land. Instead, the defendants Clifton Pape, 45, and Sally Jung, 58, both of Cleveland, Texas, actually filed fraudulent EIDL applications with the SBA that contained the victims personal identification information.. EVERY prepared and submitted false and fraudulent PPP sole proprietor loan applications via various online portals including, but not limited, to Blueacorn. The CARES Act provided $600 weekly supplemental unemployment benefits for individuals out of work for reasons related to the pandemic. A locked padlock DAVID RAINES COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER, INC. Name Jobs Reported Current Loan Loan Forgiveness; Amount ($) Date Approved Amount ($) Date; CONQUEST COMPLETION SERVICES, LLC: 129: 6,940,800: July 30, 2020: 7,069,157 According to the National Priorities Project, thats enough money to pay for both coronavirus vaccine doses for every American and 1.1 million full-time jobs at $15 an hour for an entire year. The prosecution of this case is being handled by the Offices Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit. In a nod to changes that have improved oversight, William Shear, the Government Accountability Offices director of financial markets and community investment, testified on March 25 that, Although SBA has taken some steps to mitigate fraud risks to PPP and EIDL, such as conducting PPP loan reviews and implementing new EIDL controls, the agency has not yet conducted a formal fraud risk assessment for either program. The Small Business Administration last month agreed to conduct such a risk assessment. 650 Poydras Street, Suite 1600 The DOJ says this ill-gotten money was in many cases used to buy luxury personal items like cars, homes, vacation trips, and jewelry. If the borrower can prove they used the money to pay employees and eligible expenses, they can ask the SBA for loan forgiveness. POGO was unable to reach Edwards before publication. Act 12 of the 2020 First Extraordinary Session of the Louisiana Legislature provided for a one-time $250 rebate for eligible workers earning $50,000 per year or less, who spent at least 200 hours responding to or mitigating the COVID-19 crisis from March 22, 2020, through May 14, 2020. The PPP loan forgiveness is not subject to Louisiana state income tax. Investigators determined there were at least 110 PPP sole proprietor loan applications in and around the Thibodeaux, Louisiana area and they all had the same invoices and federal tax forms (Schedule C) with the same business name and amounts. According to the Board of Barber Examiners, to legally run a barbershop, an owner must have a business license and a barber license if they are cutting hair even if that business is run out of a home. Aqeel and others in the scheme allegedly used loan funds to pay individuals they claimed were employees but were actually fake employees, according to a court filing. They determined that a lot of the folks that they have as subjects of their investigations in HHS OIG [for Medicare and Medicaid fraud], were also committing PPP and EIDL fraud, Grossman said. Businesses applying for a PPP loan must provide documentation to confirm that they have previously paid employees the compensation represented in the loan application. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. This map is your interactive guide to confirmed cases, recoveries and deaths from the coronavirus around the state, nation and world. Many Paycheck Protection Program loans appear to have been issued to recipients who were not eligible under the programs rules. All rights reserved. April 15, 2021. According to the SBA, lenders are responsible for vetting applications and making sure the applicant is telling the truth in whatever way they see fit. In connection with loan applications for COVID-19 relief available from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) of the SBA, the defendants falsely and grossly overstated the number of employees and payroll at their nail salons and other businesses through fraudulent and doctored payroll and tax records in order to obtain larger loans. portville central school yearbooks; jennette mccurdy astroseek. 2020 Louisiana Individual Income Tax returns and payments are due Monday, May 17, 2021. criminally charging someone for stealing $10,000 or less. Louisiana Department of Revenue Identity Theft Affidavit, Louisiana Workforce Commission Suspected Fraud Form. Theres a lot of red flags that they look at in the data to help us determine if its something we need to look at deeper.. The largest loan paid out was $20,833. Both laws have provisions allowing whistleblowers to receive a reward for successful recoveries obtained for the U.S. government. Dr. James Hobley: When should you be screened for colon cancer? All totaled, in that city of 43,000 people lenders approved $1.3 million dollars just for barbershop owners. On March 30, the Justice Department unveiled new charges against Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector. Firm estimates of fraud related to CARES Act spending, including the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, may not be available until many more cases are brought and more analysis has been conductedpotentially years away. According to Grossman, the Small Business Administration watchdog official, all of our ongoing investigations involve individual borrowers rather than lenders. Greenberg is a friend of Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, and both were identified in a recent New York Times report as having allegedly paid women for sex, as well as potentially a 17-year-old girl. For more information on the Departments response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus. (In late March, the Justice Department told Congress that it had charged $446.8 million in losses related to PPP. Some of these cases may still be under seal and charges are routinely being unsealed.) And if theyre not interested in prosecuting, for whatever reason, we dont further pursue it at that time., Many of the cases are moving quickly, despite their complexity. NGUYEN, 44, and VICTORIA HO, 31, both of Hicksville, New York, and DAT HO, 33, of the Bronx, New York, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison; one count of major fraud against the United States, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison; and one count of conspiracy to make false statements, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. And there is a lot of gray area in the Paycheck Protection Program, partly because the Small Business Administrations rules for the program changed repeatedly and were unclear, and because Congress created loose criteria for loan eligibility and allowed applicants to self-certify their information. Filed under investigation The defendants were arrested this morning. From at least in or about April 2020 through at least in or about June 2020, NGUYEN, VICTORIA HO, and DAT HO engaged in a scheme to submit online applications to at least two financial institutions for a total of over $13 million in government-guaranteed loans for the Victoria Companies through the SBAs PPP. First Home Bank approved the $8.4 million loan, among the less than 0.1% of Paycheck Protection Program loans this large or larger (the maximum is $10 million). Not all those loans were necessarily fraudulently obtained. OIG and its law enforcement partners will relentlessly pursue fraudsters and bring them to justice. In addition to automated checks against existing government databases, lenders could have conducted online searches or called businesses neighboring a loan applicant to help establish whether the company seeking the loan is real or is the size it claims to be. Meant to help small businesses keep workers on the payroll, the Paycheck Protection Program offers loans of up to $10 million that can be forgiven in full if recipients meet certain employee retention requirements. In a case that garnered national attention, the U.S. Secret Service seized over $8.4 million in Paycheck Protection Program funds from a seemingly bogus ministry in Orlando, Florida that had no apparent operations at its physical location and a website filled with generic language taken from other religious organizations. The amounts varied from less than $2,000 to more than $20,000. NGUYEN and DAT HO will be presented in United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York in connection with these and other unrelated charges. The scandal is whats legal, not whats illegal.. When we receive complaints on PPP and EIDL fraud, we immediately coordinate with the Department of Justice, to see what their interest is in the case. In remarks before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an influential business lobbying group, last June before the SBA released partial data identifying Paycheck Protection Program recipients of loans above $150,000, then-Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ethan P. Davis said that with the administrations decision to release that information, some have predicted more qui tams as a result., Davis then said, Let me be clear. Babysitter arrested after 5-year-old fatally shot by 6-year-old cousin. More than a year after the pandemic brought much of the economy to a standstill, mounting fraud cases underscore how the Small Business Administrations (SBA) oversight of its massive taxpayer-backed lending programs proved to be inadequate as they became magnets for fraudsters. Allegedly, the family sought, ultimately unsuccessfully, to use the funds to purchase a $3.7 million mansion in Disney Worlds Golden Oak gated community. The program has traditionally been used to help small businesses facing revenue loss in the wake of natural disasters. (WAFB) - Since the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) launched to help businesses pay their employees to prevent great losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some people have. The Justice Department has brought criminal charges against at least 209 individuals in 119 cases related to Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) fraud since banks and other lenders began processing loan applications on behalf of the Small Business Administration on April 3, 2020. Thanks to the combined efforts of the SBA, the FBI, and IRS-CI, the defendants face prosecution., SBA-OIG Special Agent-in-Charge Amaleka McCall-Brathwaite said: Falsifying documents to fraudulently gain access to SBA program funds is unconscionable. Analyzing that data for red flags is a way to identity subsets of loans and grants that warrant closer scrutiny and to help direct scarce investigative resources. Shes accused of making up fake businesses to collect more than $20,000 through a PPP loan and another $500,000 in prepaid debit cards through unemployment claims. About one year after the passage of the CARES Act, $626 million in funds have already been seized or forfeited related to criminal and civil investigations of pandemic loan fraud. But, he added, the CARES Act removed that control, calling it a pivotal change.. Sah, who pleaded guilty on March 24, used the funds to buy a Bentley convertible and multiple homes, among other things. edgewater hotel haunted; can uk consultant doctors work in usa; is spitfire a compliment A vast number of referrals to the Small Business Administrations (SBA) Office of Inspector General involve complaints of identity theft, particularly related to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. The three Economic Injury Disaster loans Greenberg obtained should have triggered red flags galore. 61000. project, POGO has been examining equitable access to government loans, grants, and contracts. Identity theft is probably the most common underlying cause of the fraud that were finding, particularly in the EIDL program, SBA Inspector General Hannibal Mike Ware said in testimony before Congress in late March. In fraud cases where there is no apparent misuse of a loan, civil enforcement may be more likely than criminal prosecution. The Justice Department has brought criminal charges against at least 209 individuals in 119 cases related to Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) fraud since banks and other lenders began processing loan applications on behalf of the Small Business Administration on April 3, 2020. | In addition, the defendants falsely listed the same employees in applications for different nail salons to support the loan amounts applied for, and some purported employees were listed as employees of as many as seven different nail salons during the same time period. of Loans Jobs Retained PPP Fraud in Pride, Louisiana. Copyright 2021 WAFB. Louisiana has a total of 217,332 businesses that received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans from the Small Business Administration. However, industry insiders say the barbershop industry is largely cash-based, making it easy to operate under the radar. Seven of the approved loans were processed by Cross River Bank, a top Paycheck Protection Program lender that closely allied itself with financial technology firms. Small Business Administration management flagged loans for at least one of 35 reasons, such as the recipient was created after the cutoff date of February 15, 2020, or the recipients owner had a criminal record, potentially rendering the recipient ineligible. For example, in the city of Gonzales, there were 70 people claiming to own a barbershop who applied for loans. THE DELAHOUSSAYE CO., INC. $150K . For instance, the department may decline cases involving smaller-dollar amounts, especially in busier U.S. attorneys offices around the country, Grossman said. The cases involve attempts to steal a total of more than $175 million from the program, with actual losses to the federal government totaling more than $70 million, the DOJ reports. The cash injection and potentially forgivable loans were . At $367 billion, the amount of disaster funds provided through the EIDL COVID program is more than three times the amount of disaster loan funds approved for all disasters combined since the SBA was created in 1953, wrote Jovita Carranza, then-head of the Small Business Administration, in December 2020. This is your state and county equivalent level look at how many have gotten a dose or doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. But the government could have implemented these safeguards from the beginning, which may have prevented significant levels of apparent fraud in the program. Using that public data, the 9 News Investigators took a close look at PPP loans given out in Louisiana. Ryan Summers In July, banks filed nearly seven times the average number of suspicious activity reports. However, both Kennedy and Ricks say the good the program did far outweigh any possible fraud. Congress also authorized the Small Business Administrations existing Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program to lend in response to the pandemic, and nearly $202 billion in loans through that program have been approved as of April 1. But it may be far greater than the fraud rate seen in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: As alleged, these defendants conspired to rip off the SBAs COVID-relief small business loan program and financial institutions by lying about how many people they employed in their family business and how much they paid those employees. Suspicious activity reports for small business loan fraud continued at levels far higher than normal through the end of 2020, according to POGOs review of federal data. In connection with these loan applications, the defendants falsely and grossly overstated the number of employees at the Victoria Companies and wages paid to those employees in order to obtain larger loans. Another large identity theft case led to charges against Jeremie Saintvil of Delray Beach, Florida in March. We expect to go to trial because of the serious nature of this matter.. The line is staffed 24/7. You can search the SBA's entire PPP loan data below. judy norton children; court ordered community service california EVERY falsely certified that the applications and the information provided in the supporting documents were true and accurate when she electronically submitted the fraudulent PPP loan applications. The Paycheck Protection Program saved millions of jobs. Audrey Strauss, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Amaleka McCall-Brathwaite, Eastern Region Special Agent-in-Charge of the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA-OIG), William F. Sweeney Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Jonathan D. Larsen, Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), announced today the arrests of NGOC MANH NGUYEN, a/k/a Peter Nguyen, VICTORIA DIEUY HO, a/k/a Vicky Ho, and DAT TAT HO for a fraudulent scheme to obtain over $13 million in Government-guaranteed loans designed to provide relief to small businesses during the novel coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. Ryan Summers in July, banks filed nearly seven times the average number of suspicious reports. 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