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U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington Vanessa R. Waldref, announced that BNL Technical Services, LLC has pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining nearly $500,0000 through a scheme to secure COVID-19 relief funding, according to an Oct. 22 press release.
Chief U.S. District Judge Stanley A. Bastian accepted BNL's plea and scheduled sentencing for March 11, 2025, at 1:30 p.m., according to the release. The owner of NBL, Wilson Pershing Stevenson III, agreed to pay around $1.1 million dollars in his settlement.
The plea agreement, along with information disclosed during court proceedings, revealed that between 2020 and 2021, BNL provided contract labor services to prime contractors at the Hanford Site. According to the release, despite receiving payments for labor costs from the Department of Energy throughout the pandemic, including times when employees were not physically present on-site, BNL applied for and received a Paycheck Protection Program loan in April 2020.
The PPP, created as part of the CARES Act in March 2020, was intended to support small businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the program, loans were fully guaranteed by the United States and could be forgiven if used for eligible expenses, primarily payroll. However, BNL misused these funds, as BNL employees’ pay and benefits were already covered by DOE contract funds and other federal sources, including the Veterans Administration.
Shortly after receiving the funds, BNL reportedly misappropriated more than $424,230 of the PPP loan for unauthorized expenditures. In August 2021, BNL, through owner Wilson Pershing Stevenson III, falsely certified that the loan proceeds were used appropriately, thus securing forgiveness for the loan.
“These critical and limited COVID-19 funds were set aside to help small businesses stay afloat during a deadly pandemic,” said U.S. Attorney Waldref in the press release. “BNL fraudulently obtained these funds and then illegally used the money for their own purpose."
Waldref praised her office’s COVID-19 Fraud Strike Force for holding fraudsters accountable, she said this protects the local economy and small businesses. --->READ MORE HERE
Social media is abuzz with videos alleging a list of active warrants has been released for people thought to have engaged in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan fraud.
Search data from Google Trends showed breakout queries for people looking for the list, including the phrases "ppp loan warrant list 2024 website" and "ppp loan website lookup."
Most of those searches lead to nothing because, perhaps not surprisingly, there is no such list.
PPP loan arrests:4 sentenced to 8 to 10 years in prison for millions of dollars in PPP loan fraud
It's true that people have been arrested, charged and convicted for fraud regarding PPP loans, but the idea that there is a list of active warrants for PPP fraudsters is pure fabrication.
Why are people looking for a PPP loan warrant list?
While it's not clear who first made the claim, several videos over the past day have cropped up claiming that there was a list of active warrants regarding people who may have provided fraudulent information when signing up for PPP loans.
One video uploaded by TikTok user "PI MOM" has received more than five million views since it was posted a day ago, claiming that "arrests warrants are dropping" and that law enforcement is arresting people who defrauded the PPP program during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Other users have taken to the platform to make jokes about how the program was "a setup" based on how easy it was to obtain the loan or chastise people who should have known better.
The problem with these claims is that arrest warrants aren't issued in a publicly distributed list. While anyone can look up an active warrant list, they have to do so by searching a database using specific information about a person, such as their name, nickname, race or age.
There are public databases that show who received a PPP loan, however, which may have been distributed and, like a game of telephone, was misconstrued as a list of businesses that allegedly committed fraud. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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