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| Photo Credit: Canva/Luhuanfeng |
Two former government employees from Long Island will spend more than a year in federal lockup for defrauding loan programs meant to help businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Arthur Cornwall, age 43, of Babylon, and Sean Williams, age 42, of Valley Stream, were each sentenced to 18 months in prison in Central Islip federal court on Wednesday, March 20, after pleading guilty to wire fraud.
Prosecutors said Cornwall, a former signal maintainer with the New York City Transit Authority, and Williams, a former New York State Court officer, received nearly $770,000 in small business loans between May and July 2020.
The loans, issued under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program (EIDLP), were meant to provide emergency financial assistance to businesses hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to investigators, Cornwall and Williams submitted fraudulent applications to the US Small Business Administration (SBA) for purported corporate entities they controlled.
Included with the applications were supporting documentation containing bogus information, including the name of the person applying, the number of employees, revenue, payroll costs, and the intended use of the loan funds.
Prosecutors said instead of using the money for disaster relief, the men blew it on personal expenses like real estate, credit card debt, and buying cryptocurrency. --->READ MORE HERE
A former Cedar Rapids, Iowa, resident who helped other individuals procure more than 30 false and fraudulent COVID-19 pandemic loans, valued at more than $600,000, was sentenced on March 8, 2024, to six months in federal prison. Diamond Davies, age 24, from Maple Grove, Minnesota, received the prison term after a July 31, 2023 guilty plea to one count of wire fraud.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (“CARES”) Act is a federal law enacted in late March 2020 that provided emergency financial assistance, including Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) loan funds, to the millions of Americans who were suffering the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Evidence at Davies’s plea and sentencing hearings showed that, over a two-month period in 2021, Davies helped to facilitate approximately 50 fraudulent PPP loan applications with a total value of approximately $1 million. Of these fraudulent PPP applications, over 30 were successful, and the government and its participating lenders in the PPP lost over $600,000. To obtain the fraud proceeds, false, fraudulent, and fictitious documents and statements, including fake tax documents, were submitted to various lending institutions in support of the PPP loans for the PPP applicants. Davies helped collect a fee (a portion of the fraudulent loan proceeds) from some of the PPP applicants.
Davies was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams. Davies was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. She was ordered to make $651,582 in restitution to the Small Business Administration and one of its participating lenders. She must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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