Charleston, South Carolina — Lori Hammond, 53 of Summerville, Catherine (“Cassie”) Needham, 36, of Manning, Jontrell Wright, 35, of Holly Hill, and Christopher Conrad, 39, of Holly Hill, have all pleaded responsible to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud, in reference to their roles in fraudulently acquiring hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in PPP loans.
Proof offered to the Court docket confirmed that from in or round June 2020 by round January 2021, Lori Hammond prompted a number of materially fraudulent PPP mortgage functions to be submitted to federally insured monetary establishments on behalf of herself and her co-conspirators. In these mortgage functions, Hammond used the identification of a deceased particular person, misrepresented the variety of staff and payroll bills of the entities searching for the loans, connected fraudulent tax paperwork, and made quite a few different false and deceptive statements. As a part of the conspiracy, Hammond assisted Needham, Conrad, and Wright by filling out the mortgage software paperwork with materially false and fraudulent info after which submitting them to a person in California. The person in California would in flip submit the fraudulent mortgage functions to monetary establishments in trade for a payment. Primarily based on the false representations and submissions within the functions, the authorized PPP lenders funded the PPP loans. After the funds had been deposited into the respective accounts, Hammond, Wright, Needham, and Conrad used the funds for non-qualifying, non-business-related functions, together with houses, property, automobiles, and different private purchases.
In complete, the members of the conspiracy fraudulently obtained $4,721,638.50 in PPP mortgage funds.
The defendants all face a most penalty of twenty years in federal jail. In addition they face a high quality of as much as $250,000, restitution, and three years of supervision to observe the time period of imprisonment. United States District Choose David C. Norton accepted the responsible plea and can sentence the defendants after receiving and reviewing a sentencing report ready by the US Probation Workplace.
On Might 17, 2021, the Legal professional Normal established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Job Drive to marshal the assets of the Division of Justice in partnership with businesses throughout authorities to reinforce efforts to fight and stop pandemic-related fraud. The Job Drive bolsters efforts to analyze and prosecute probably the most culpable home and worldwide legal actors and assists businesses tasked with administering reduction applications to forestall fraud by, amongst different strategies, augmenting and incorporating present coordination mechanisms, figuring out assets and methods to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing info and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For extra info on the Division’s response to the pandemic, please go to https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.
Anybody with details about allegations of tried fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Division of Justice’s Nationwide Heart for Catastrophe Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at 866-720-5721 or through the NCDF Net Criticism Type at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Assistant U.S. Legal professional Emily Limehouse is prosecuting the case.
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