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 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. 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 offices 44 investigators have been working at least three times the caseload that theyre usually used to working. The FBI, Secret Service, Homeland Security Investigations, and other offices of inspectors general are also part of the federal law enforcement effort. All rights reserved. The Department of Justice (DOJ) says as of Aug. 8, more than 5.2 million forgivable loans have been approved, at a total of more than $525 billion. The Economic Injury Disaster Loan program is longstanding, and until recently the Small Business Administration limited these loans to $150,000 (last month it raised the cap to $500,000). 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. mike vernon royal household; are there snakes in gran canaria; shooting in laurel, md yesterday. The Justice Department has accused numerous defendants of using Paycheck Protection Program loans for unlawful purposes, such as purchasing private planes, sports cars, and taking pricey trips to Las Vegas casinos. Marion State Bank. According to the U.S. Attorneys Office, there have been dozens of people charged with fraud nationwide and there are five pending Federal civil procedures where agencies are looking to get back $2.3 million worth of fraudulent assets including two high-end cars, a house, and cash. 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. Mr. Santemore's pleaded guilty on April 27, 2022, and was sentenced on July 25, 2022 but the terms of his sentence are under seal. 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. In 111 instances, the zip code in the Small Business Administrations data did not match the state provided. The SBA has very broad rules, very, very large leeway on what the lender had to request from the bar to get that guarantee secure, said the SBA Louisiana District Director Michael Ricks. Both programs lacked basic anti-fraud safeguards and the Small Business Administration exercised insufficient oversight, according to the agencys watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, and congressional committees that have investigated the programs. The line is staffed 24/7. 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 Small Business Administrations Office of Inspector General found a significant gap in the agencys data on underserved markets, such as ethnicity, veteran status, and women-owned businesses. 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. are moving. Sah, who pleaded guilty on March 24, used the funds to buy a Bentley convertible and multiple homes, among other things. Showing 50 of 9,060 results. It soon became apparent that the Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs setup also made it particularly susceptible to fraud. This March, the Government Accountability Office revealed that 4 months after SBA started using a system to approve Economic Injury Disaster loans in batches, agency officials realized this system contained alerts that should have been reviewed by loan officers, but had not been. The Small Business Administration has sent 1.34 million referrals related to Economic Injury Disaster loans to its office of inspector general, which is tackling these and Paycheck Protection Program fraud cases in coordination with a host of other law enforcement agencies. SOUTHERN MAGNOLIA LANDSCAPING LLC. 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. The disaster loan programs strongest internal control is the ability to receive directly from the IRS recent tax transcripts, wrote James Rivera, head of the SBAs Office of Disaster Assistance, last fall. Complaints can also be filed online here. The Department of Justice confirms they are looking into reports of PPP fraud across the nation. Copyright 2020 WAFB. 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. Federal investigators want you to speak up about PPP fraud, Federal investigators want you to speak up about PPP Fraud, LSU WR Malik Nabers arrested in New Orleans; prosecutors refuse to charge with condition, LPSO: Deputy arrested, terminated after making harassing phone calls, TikTok sets new default time limits for minors, Fight involving 9 people on Southerns campus leads to 1 arrest. PPP Loan Recipient List By State Louisiana 217,332 TOTAL PPP LOANS $12.2B TOTAL LOAN AMOUNT $56,095 AVERAGE PPP LOAN 6 AVG COMPANY SIZE Louisiana has a total of 217,332 businesses that received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans from the Small Business Administration. Gibsland Bank & Trust Company. Making sure that victims of federal crimes are treated with compassion, fairness and respect. Both the outgoing Trump administration and the Biden administration appear to have learned lessons from the fraud that occurred in 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. An estimated 1% of that 2009 stimulus was lost to fraud (some claim the rate is even lower than that). Mr. Aqeel asserts his presumption of innocence and demands the United States prove their allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. Mingledorff also said, The case is in the pretrial phase of litigation. Unfortunately, the owners of Victoria Nails & Spa saw this program as their own personal piggy bank. As part of its own COVID-19 relief spending tracker It was this difficult road that we had about a week, but our bankers got it done and, and our businesswomen and businessmen stepped up to the plate and took advantage of it, said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF NORTH LOUISIANA, INC. BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION OF NORTHWEST LOUISIANA, ROSS H DIES DDS & BENJAMIN A BEACH DDS, LLC, Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting, Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services, Other Services (except Public Administration). Additionally, CARES II provides up to $300 in weekly supplemental unemployment benefits. 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. Your Address, Corporation Income/Franchise Extension Request. The Veterans Administration, Office of the Inspector General, is an active member of the PRAC Fraud Task Force. Click here for information on the investigation into the Mount Vernon Police Department. On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. POGO has sought additional data from the Small Business Administration, and to improve data collection. I urge anyone who believes he or she is a victim of this type of fraud to report it to the National Center for Disaster Fraud," said US Attorney Brandon Fremin. 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 louisiana ppp loan arrestsanxiety support groups columbia, sc Africa -China Review Africa -China Cooperation and Transformation fidelity express money order refund thamani ya rupia ya mjerumani In the three decades since the laws passage, there have been only six whistleblower settlements involving FIRREA, yielding $19.9 billion in recoveries, but only $9.3 million in rewards to whistleblowers, according to Whistleblower Network News. All rights reserved. Ryan Summers Using that public data, the 9 News Investigators took a close look at PPP loans given out in Louisiana. 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. Both laws have provisions allowing whistleblowers to receive a reward for successful recoveries obtained for the U.S. government. Many believe a high percentage of these grants were stolen, but some federal prosecutors with heavy caseloads may find it hard to justify A borrower applied for a PPP loan from a lender or bank. complaint (20-mag-12908). The PPP was developed to ease the pain of COVID-19 economic restraints on working Americans. Red Flags: The First Year of COVID-19 Loan Fraud Cases, $189 Billion in Questionable Paycheck Protection Program Loans, With over $189 billion in questionable Paycheck Protection Program loans, law enforcement has just scratched the surface, By 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. As of this month, weve seized over $580 million from over 23,000 fraudulent EIDL loans., Weve got a process in place that once weve identified, for instance, a bank account that has money sitting in it, that was deposited through a fraudulent EIDL loan, we contact the Secret Service, and they have a method to go in and seize those funds, Grossman said. All rights reserved. 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. 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. Eastern District of Louisiana This is your state and county equivalent level look at how many have gotten a dose or doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. Its the first public case of fraud in these pandemic loan programs attributed to corruption within the agencys own ranks. As former federal prosecutor Tarek Helou told the Wall Street Journal, The scandal is whats legal, not whats illegal., Lenders may also be more likely to face civil enforcement than criminal enforcement. An indictment includes text and email messages involving creating tax records for some of the companies. 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. This March, the Government Accountability Office added the Small Business Administrations emergency loan programs for small businesses to its biennial high-risk list of executive branch programs vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or that need transformation.. Data is available, but its reliability for the purpose of assessing whether Paycheck Protection Program loans are reaching the underserved communities that Congress wanted prioritized is limited because the demographic data is incomplete. (He also applied for a separate loan just days before being indicted.) A lock ( In July, banks filed nearly seven times the average number of suspicious activity reports. To disguise the fraud, family members moved the proceeds through several bank accounts held in different names, according to the Justice Department. Each loan paid out was guaranteed using taxpayer money. OIG and its law enforcement partners will relentlessly pursue fraudsters and bring them to justice. The False Claims Act will play a central role in the Departments pursuit of COVID-19 related fraud, Michael Granston, a Justice Department deputy assistant attorney general, said in December. The loans have to be repaid with low interest. This table shows the top 5 industries in Louisiana by number . Federal investigators cannot comment on active investigations or give an estimate on how much fraud may have occurred through federal pandemic relief programs, but a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorneys Office of the Middle District of Louisiana confirms there were fraudulent applications submitted in Louisiana through several relief programs including the PPP. 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