Myriad state and federal agencies are still engaged in efforts to claw back at least some of the billions of dollars in federal pandemic recovery money that were acquired by fraud.
The Western District of Oklahoma Coronavirus Fraud Task Force, for example, is getting results. The task force, created in 2021, combines the efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute fraud related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It focuses on programs created or funded by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act and the American Rescue Plan Act and is designed to find the best way to detect, deter and punish those who took advantage of federal and state programs during the pandemic.
Those programs included fraud involving the Paycheck Protection Program, Economic Injury Disaster Loans, the Main Street Lending Program, unemployment insurance fraud and fraud involving pandemic-related supplies.
NBC News previously reported that as much as $80 billion — 10% — of the $800 billion distributed in the Paycheck Protection Plan was pilfered.
Coronavirus Fraud Task Force efforts have produced the following cases, to date:
• Brian Foster, 53, of Norman pleaded guilty last November to lying to a financial institution. He admitted providing false income and tax information to a bank when applying for a $20,833 PPP loan in another person’s name. He has not been sentenced yet.
• Randisha Parker, 41, of Oklahoma City pleaded guilty last month to making a false statement to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Parker admitted she knowingly made false statements to the SBA when she applied for a $56,000 EIDL loan. At sentencing, Parker faces up to two years of imprisonment and a fine of up to $5,000.
• Naquib U. Hatami, 50, of Fairfax, Virginia, was charged Dec. 7 with making a false statement to a financial institution. Hatami is accused of giving false information to Stride Bank in Enid regarding his company’s payroll and number of employees when he applied in 2020 for a $160,480 PPP loan.
No activity in the case has been recorded in the two months since the charge was filed.
• Three Canadians and a Calaifornian pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and related crimes. The four were collectively ordered to serve 104 months in federal prison and pay nearly $3.5 million in restitution.
The defendants participated in a scheme to fraudulently acquire personal protective equipment and event tickets, which came to the attention of law enforcement in Oklahoma when co-conspirators used stolen credit card information from 52 credit cards to purchase $678,842 worth of tickets to Oklahoma State University athletic events. The defendants also targeted U.S.-based businesses selling pandemic related supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Floridian fraudsters
• Alfred Smith, 37, of Miami, Florida, was sentenced last July to serve two and a half years in federal prison and ordered to pay $246,606 in restitution.
Smith committed fraud using debit cards issued by the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, the state workforce agency tasked with administering the unemployment insurance program in Oklahoma.
Smith used stolen identities to obtain unemployment insurance benefits from OESC. After OESC issued debit cards containing the unemployment benefits, Smith used the cards to withdraw cash from local ATMs.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress provided additional funding under the CARES Act and ARPA for unemployment benefits, which made the unemployment insurance program a target for fraudulent schemes.
• Andrice Vanec Sainvil, 20, of Margate, Florida, was sentenced in December 2022 to serve 24 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $26,700 in restitution.
Sainvil admitted conspiring with others to steal the identities of dozens of Oklahomans, use their victims’ names and Social Security numbers to apply for fraudulent unemployment insurance benefits from the OESC and cause OESC to mail prepaid debit cards containing those fraudulently obtained benefits to addresses accessible to co-conspirators.
Sainvil retrieved those prepaid debit cards and used them to withdraw thousands of dollars in cash from ATMs throughout Oklahoma City and elsewhere.
• Jill Nicole Ford, 31, formerly of Edmond, pleaded guilty in January 2022 to bank fraud and money laundering and agreed to forfeit $252,143 in proceeds from her crimes.
She admitted fraudulently obtaining a loan through the Main Street Lending Program for her business, Oliver & Olivia Apparel.
In the loan application, Ford falsely represented that she would use the loan proceeds for working capital and payroll only and that she would not make distributions to herself as the company’s owner. However, Ford used a portion of the proceeds to pay for construction on her house and purchase a luxury SUV for personal use.
She has not yet been sentenced. The court and the Justice Department agreed to allow Ford to travel to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for a work conference this month; a court record indicates she is employed in Leander, Texas.
• Octavio Sanchez, 49, of Norman pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. He used the identity of his dead sister to apply for $3,200 in economic impact payments from the Internal Revenue Service.
At sentencing, Sanchez faces up to five years of imprisonment, up to a $250,000 fine for conspiracy and a mandatory term of imprisonment of 24 months for aggravated identify theft.
• Three Oklahomans were indicted in Tulsa’s Northern District federal court on multiple counts of wire fraud in connection with a CARES Act program.
The accused are Edson Vladimir Bellefleur, 36, Tulsa; Malcolm Andre Jones, 30, Broken Arrow; and Legreasha Junice Alexander, 40, Tulsa.
The charges allege that all three, starting in the spring of 2021 and continuing through Jan. 3, 2023, “devised a scheme and artifice” to defraud the SBA in order to obtain money — at least $160,245 — and property from the agency.
It is alleged they did so by submitting fraudulent PPP loan applications and loan forgiveness applications to SBA-approved lenders in California, Florida and Texas. The PPP was a CARES Act relief program that provided loans to small businesses to enable them to keep employees on their payrolls and pay other expenses.