Both laws have provisions allowing whistleblowers to receive a reward for successful recoveries obtained for the U.S. government. One St. Andrews Plaza - New York, NY 10007, Three Family Members Arrested for Misrepresenting Employee Payroll Figures to Receive COVID-19 Loan Funds for Chain of Family-Owned Nail Salons in New York Metropolitan Area and Other Businesses, James Margolin, Nicholas Biase But according to the Justice Department, neither company paid anywhere near the purported amounts and had few if any employees. Kindambu pleaded guilty in January. Has the curve flatten in my town? An internal analysis last fall by the Small Business Administration identified over 2 million approved PPP loan guarantees worth some $189 billion that were potentially not in compliance with the law, though it may turn out that many of those loans were not fraudulent. U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Louisiana, Former Louisiana Woman Indicted for Preparing Over 110 Fraudulent PPP Loans Totaling Over $1.1 Million Dollars, 2_ecf_doc_1_-_sharnae_every_indictment_redacted_sanitized.pdf, Dr. Charles J. Southall, III Sentenced to 60 Months in Prison for Money Laundering, Obtaining Over $889,000 Through Fraud, New Orleans Man Sentenced for Theft and Sale of Motor Vehicle from Mississippi Car Dealership, Two More New Orleans Residents Sentenced in Staged Automobile Collision Scheme, Former Louisiana Woman Indicted For Preparing Over 110 Fraudulent PPP Loans Totaling Over $1.1 Million Dollars. SOUTHERN CLASSIC OF FARMERVILLE LLC. 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. In Louisiana, a federal grand jury recently indicted a Plaquemine woman named Lestreonia Rodrigue on fraud charges. Theyre not checking licenses. But in the year since the CARES Act became law, it has received nearly 150,000 hotline complaints, representing a 19,500% increase over prior years, according to a staff memo from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. The DOJ says this ill-gotten money was in many cases used to buy luxury personal items like cars, homes, vacation trips, and jewelry. IRS-Criminal Investigation remains dedicated to working with our law enforcement partners to ensure that these types of fraud are investigated and the offenders are punished to the fullest extent of the law.. BATON ROUGE, La. We dont have the capacity to work everything that comes in, Grossman told POGO. An indictment includes text and email messages involving creating tax records for some of the companies. Ms. Strauss praised the investigative work of the SBA-OIG, FBI, and IRS-CI, and noted that the investigation remains ongoing. 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. According to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, the SBA Office of Inspector General has received nearly 750,000 referrals of suspected identity theft related to the program over the last year. Inaccuracies in the data or missing data can undermine oversight. As of late March, the department has obtained 48 convictions. That watchdog office has recommended that the agency use data analysis as a means to detect potentially ineligible and fraudulent applications.. Byron.Henderson@la.gov, On Friday, Feb. 12, LDR will begin accepting tax returns through, , the states free, electronic tax filing application; or through commercially available tax filing software. According to todays indictment, EVERY created a fictitious business called Natural Hair Afro, LLC, Houma, LA 70360 and used this fictitious business name on nearly all of the fraudulent PPP loan applications. Assistant United States Attorneys Michael C. McGinnis and Sagar K. Ravi are in charge of the prosecution. Copyright 2021 WAFB. Nick Schwellenbach Sen. J.D. This table shows the top 5 industries in Louisiana by number . Thats more than 10 times the fraud recoveries five years after the 2009 stimulus became law. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. It Got a PPP Loan. Since last October, when POGO published a report examining trends in Paycheck Protection Program loan fraud at the programs six-month mark, several eye-popping cases of alleged fraud have emerged. katherine noelle wyman; cape breton post obituaries 2022. location symbol text in word; list of female jockeys australia; mike conley house columbus ohio address This interactive map provides a picture of the ranks of the unemployed at the national, state and county level. The DOJ says falsified tax records were submitted and in some cases, stolen personal information was also used in these attempts to defraud the PPP. The three Economic Injury Disaster loans Greenberg obtained should have triggered red flags galore. Banks and other lenders have been filing a huge number of suspicious activity reports to the Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (better known as FinCEN) related to the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. This table shows the top 5 industries in Louisiana by number of loans awarded, with average loan amounts and number of jobs reported. 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. To support his loan applications, Kindambu claimed that Papillon Holdings had $150,000 in monthly payroll expenses and that Papillon Air had over $850,000 in monthly payroll expenses. Otherwise, the borrower is on the hook for the money. But it may be far greater than the fraud rate seen in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. For instance, in a review for the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, the nonprofit MITRE Corporation examined a sample of 500 records for Paycheck Protection Program loans above $150,000. Each loan paid out was guaranteed using taxpayer money. POGO found that 11 of the 15 loans were funded. The Justice Department has brought charges in at least 56 cases for alleged Paycheck Protection Program fraud, according to a POGO review detailing trends in these first cases. April 15, 2021. VICTORIA HO will be presented tomorrow in Manhattan federal court before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn. According to the Justice Department, Didier Kindambu obtained two loans by creating fraudulent payroll documentation for each business.. I dont know why it is that that some people take advantage of a program like this in a time of crisis. But, in the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, the Small Business Administration has not conducted robust data analysis to find instances of loans and grants that may have been fraudulently obtained, according to the Government Accountability Office. These cases further highlight the ways individuals appear to have taken advantage of lax oversight in the program. (The latest round, which began in January, allowed some applicants to receive a second Paycheck Protection Program loan. 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. Two of the companies, Symbiont Retailers and Horizon Enterprises, were not in good standing before the Paycheck Protection Program began. The Small Business Administration has released a list of businesses that have received emergency pandemic loans.. We hear reports of arrests and arraignments for PPP loan cases involving only $10,000 or $15,000. Grossman told POGO, we expect a lot more civil enforcement.. More than 1,400 institutions had filed SARs related to PPP, and more than 900 institutions had filed SARs related to EIDL.. We expect to go to trial because of the serious nature of this matter.. A check of Floridas Division of Corporations database would have revealed the companies had just been reinstated. EVERY created all of the false and fraudulent invoices, bank statements, and Schedule Cs. Barbershops were one of the most common businesses to apply. Faa sua busca no site. In July, the agencys inspector general warned of potentially rampant fraud in the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS The involvement of a Small Business Administration employee in a pandemic loan fraud case raises questions about the agencys vetting of employees. That new law permitted SBA to require additional information from applicants, such as tax returns, for loans and advances as part of its verification, according to Shear of the Government Accountability Office. However, the Trump administrations Justice Department also sought to assuage companies concerns, especially in regard to qui tam False Claims Act lawsuits. 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. He said that lenders have been extremely cooperative during investigations and their suspicious activity reports have been very useful.. Some of these qui tam lawsuits are traditional whistleblower cases, but others involve individuals who are slicing and dicing the data that has been made available about loans, according to Grossman. This Office was one of the districts affected by the SolarWinds intrusion. 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. AGs Office announces more than 50 arrests connected to Paycheck Protection Program fraud. He also opened bank accounts and lines of credit at financial institutions and credit card companies in the names of his elderly victims, according to the Justice Department. Copyright 2020 WAFB. Director for the Louisiana SBA District Office Michael Ricks said while that information may raise some red flags on the surface, he explained that not complying with an industrys licensing requirements does not necessarily disqualify someone from being eligible for a PPP loan. Under the False Claims Act (FCA) as well as the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), either the government or whistleblowers with non-public information can initiate civil enforcement actions. 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. Help us crowdsource fraud detection in the PPP program! (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.) According to a court filing signed by a Secret Service agent, a family of four was behind a scheme 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.. You have to understand from the lenders perspective, really, theyre just looking at income. $350K-$1M loan to BENOIT WELDING, INC. BENOIT WELDING, INC. $150K-$350K loan to THE DELAHOUSSAYE CO., INC. The SBA now also conducts manual loan reviews for the largest loans in the PPP portfolio and a random sampling of other loans. Underscoring the tension between fraud prevention and disbursing assistance quickly, the added checks to verify information submitted by applicants have somewhat slowed the processing of loan applications. NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA United States Attorney Duane A. Evans announced today the indictment of SHARNAE EVERY (EVERY), age 27, of Houston, Texas, who was charged with one (1) count of Conspiracy to Commit Mail Fraud in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1349 and two (2) counts of Mail Fraud in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1341. Unlike the previous round of the PPP, loan guaranty approval is now contingent on passing SBA fraud checks, Treasurys Do Not Pay database, and public records, the fact sheet states. PPP loan information is available to the public through the SBA, and several groups have even published that information in the form of online searchable databases that anyone can use. Lawmaker wants police trained to handle Alzheimers, dementia patients, Health Minute: First at-home flu and COVID test authorized. EVERY charged $45.00 to $120.00 from the individuals she recruited to prepare and submit the fraudulent PPP application. SBA has fired employees and contractors who were involved in approving loans to themselves or who inappropriately influenced loan approval. Jean Rabbittand Kevin Aguilarwere charged with bank fraud and conspiracy to engage in monetary transaction charges. 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 addresses listed for the two companies, according to SBA loan data, also do not match the addresses in the states corporation recordsyet another sign of potential fraud. 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. Senator Kennedy admits the program may have had some holes in it, due to how quickly it was rolled out, and the loan program has been updated many times to expand eligibility. As part of its own COVID-19 relief spending tracker to give the federal government time to investigate and evaluate the complaint before it becomes public. & Todays Internet search for PPP Loan Fraud Arrests will certainly produce an unwanted result one that includes the name of their company leading the headlines., IRS-CI Special Agent in Charge Jonathan D. Larsen said: In this difficult time when many Americans are struggling financially, it is repugnant that there are those who would fraudulently take advantage of relief efforts offered. Aqeel used some of the proceeds to purchase a Lamborghini sports car, according to the Justice Department. Click here for information on the investigation into the Mount Vernon Police Department. All rights reserved. 107 of the cases, accused individuals allegedly falsified payroll documentation to justify either getting a loan or getting a bigger loan than they were eligible for; 93 of the cases, accused individuals allegedly created fake tax documents used for verifying details in loan applications; 41 of the cases, accused individuals allegedly created bogus companies to get loans; 28 of the cases, accused individuals allegedly used defunct companies to get loans; 20 of the cases, accused individuals used stolen identities or aliases while applying for loans; 12 of the cases, accused individuals allegedly falsified ownership of existing legitimate businesses; 28 of the cases, accused individuals also obtained Economic Injury Disaster loans (some of these individuals have been accused of fraudulently obtaining these loans. Than 50 arrests connected to Paycheck Protection program began the top 5 industries in Louisiana number! K. 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