Covid-19 crime in Massachusetts.
A Carlisle man was indicted this week on charges that he obtained millions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program loans during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic based on fraudulent statements about the scores of employees he didn't actually have and then used some of the money for prohibited things: Buying a pricey New York condo and sending money to a company he controlled in India. Read more.
A Nigerian man indicted in Boston in 2020 for his role in a pandemic-unemployment scam ring that allegedly netted some $1.5 million was arrested at New York's JFK Airport, where he had just landed on a flight from Lagos on what would have been his first visit to the US, court records show. Read more.
A Weymouth man who was rounded up in a February sweep of alleged members of the gang that has long terrorized residents in and around the Mildred Hailey Apartments pleaded guilty this week - not to being a member of a criminal gang but to lying on an application for a Covid-related loan aimed at helping small businesses about whether he was facing any criminal charges at the time, the US Attorney's office reports. Read more.
Stavros Papantoniadis, still behind bars as he awaits charges that he terrorized and beat employees at his Stash's pizza places in Dorchester and Roslindale, faces new charges that he defrauded a program meant to help small businesses stay afloat during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more.
A man screaming about masks attacked a 69-year-old woman at the State Street Orange Line stop Wednesday afternoon, ripping her mask off, knocking her to the floor and trying to drag her to the tracks before a bystander intervened, Transit Police and WBZ report. Read more.
A former Revere man now living in Florida was sentenced this week to 29 months in federal prison for applying for - and getting - a $2.5 million Covid-19 payment for the 154 employees he didn't have in his Massachusetts painting company, the US Attorney's office in Boston reports. Read more.
Miller high life on government money in LA, via Homeland Security.
A Manhattanite turned Miami glamazon who chronicled her pricey lifestyle on Instagram was sentenced to five years in federal prison today for a scheme in which she used other people's IDs to fraudulently obtain enough Covid-19 small-business and unemployment benefits - many via a scheme involving the Massachusetts RMV Web site - to support a lifestyle that included private-jet trips to Las Vegas and Los Angeles and a luxury apartment, the US Attorney's office in Boston reports. Read more.
A no longer cocky man who thought he could get away with overcharging desperate hospitals for N95 masks in the spring of 2020 on the mistaken belief that was at worst a civil infraction, has agreed to plead guilty to the criminal offense of conspiracy to commit price gouging in violation of the Defense Production Act, the US Attorney's office in Boston reports. Read more.
A Beverly pizza-shop owner who got $680,000 in federal Covid-19 relief funds based on applications with inflated employee counts, then used the money to jump from pizza making to alpaca farming, was sentenced to two years in federal prison this week for his wooly fabrications, the US Attorney's office announced. Read more.
A federal judge this week sentenced Loc Vo, 56, of Brighton, to two years behind bars following his admission that he used much of the $1.5 million he got in federal Covid-relief funds to invest in a stocks rather than the food-truck and publishing-tech companies he claimed he would use the money to support. Read more.
Update: Case sent back to state court, where Baldursdottir voluntarily dismissed it on Sept. 25, 2023.
A woman who faces a misdemeanor larceny charge over the body-worn camera she says an officer managed to drop while pushing her out of the way of Mayor Wu's car outside the mayor's Roslindale home during an early morning Covid-19 screaming protest has sued the city, the mayor, all the judges who sit at West Roxbury municipal court and a clerk magistrate there for violating her civil rights. Read more.
The former owner of a Beverly pizza place admitted last week he obtained federal Covid-19 payroll-support funds based on employees he didn't have so he could retire to the life of a gentleman alpaca farm and cryptocurrency radio host in Vermont, the US Attorney's office reports. Read more.
Precious passport; in fact, she is Kenyan.
A Canton woman was sentenced to 44 months in federal prison yesterday for her role as a sort of banker for an online romance scheme targeting lonely older women and later for filing fake pandemic-relief applications. Read more.
A South Easton man who obtained an $836,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan in 2020 based on a claim his used-car dealership had 40 employees actually had only 3 or 4 workers including himself, so he was able to use the money to buy and move to a new house and buy a Rolls Royce and some French bulldogs - which left him enough to pay up to a 20% kickback to three Florida "recruiters" who got him involved in the scam, the US Attorney's office charges. Read more.
Loc Vo, 55, pleaded guilty this week to one count of wire fraud, admitting to government charges that he used federal aid to help small businesses stay afloat during the pandemic to buy hares in biotech, Web and financial services, electric-car and gaming companies. Read more.
A man whose lawyer says he "reached to dark corners of the Internet" when the pandemic hit and he lost his good paying job at Chrysler was sentenced yesterday to 30 months in federal prison and ordered to repay the $269,465 he got from 12 different states by using other people's IDs and bogus company information to get pandemic unemployment insurance and payroll help, the US Attorney's office in Boston reports. Read more.
The Attorney General's office is investigating a pop-up company it says received more than $15 million in state funds for eight million face masks, bought several million, then never delivered any of them to Massachusetts. Read more.
Update: Charges dropped.
A man the feds call "a purported Orthodox Christian monk" and his live-in lawyer were arrested today on charges they defrauded the government out of $3.6 million in Covid relief funds by filing bogus applications filled with lies about how many employees they had to obtain money that they then used to upgrade the properties they already owned and to buy a new one, rather than using the money to keep employing workers they did not, in fact, have. Read more.
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