Six months after the Paycheck Protection Program ended, the federal government has charged at least seven Inland Empire residents with fraud from the Paycheck Protection Program or the California Employment Development Department.
Cindi Denton, 63, of Eastvale, was sentenced in the Southern District of Florida to six months in prison and 12 months of home confinement Oct. 8, after pleading guilty to taking a PPP loan of $491,310 for her defunct Beverly Hills business consulting service, Emerald Jade Solutions, using fraudulent documents.
Clues
Investigators identified the fraudulent documents because they did not match one another, were shown through their file properties to have been modified using iText, were created in May, even though they were supposedly a February bank statement, and were the same documents used in other fraudulent applications, according to the complaint.
In a tapped phone call, Denton said she used the loan to pay “credit cards and cars and rents and all that kind of stuff,” and said she only had one paid employer, not 24 as the application said, according to the complaint.
Conspiracy
Denton’s application was part of a larger conspiracy that received in total $17.6 million from 42 accepted loans.
Oumar Sissoko, 59, of Temecula, was charged with four counts of wire fraud in April, but has not yet had a verdict returned. The indictment against him, from a federal grand jury, alleges he received a $7.25 million PPP loan to his personal banking account after he stated he was hiring 450 full-time employees for a road-repair company, and would have monthly payroll expenses of $2.9 million. He then used $138,000 of the loan on a luxury car, $6,000 on a computer, $100,000 in his purchase of a New Hampshire company and $150,000 he transferred to Mauritanian accounts associated with his other company, the complaint alleged.
Employment fraud
The Inland Empire has also seen its share of unemployment fraud.
Gabriela Llerenas, 49, of Perris, pleaded guilty Sept. 8 to mail fraud resulting in 200 fraudulent COVID-19-related unemployment claims with a $1.6-4.3 million price tag, according to her plea deal. Her sentence has not yet been decided.
Three Inland Empire women pleaded guilty June 14 to using other people’s information to file for pandemic-related unemployment benefits, according to a press release from the Justice Department.
Paris Denise Thomas, 33, of San Bernardino pleaded guilty to 47 fraudulent unemployment claims, receiving $477,000 total, using the information of California state prison inmates, according to the release. Sequoia Edwards, 35, of Moreno Valley, received $456,000 through 27 fraudulent claims. Mireya Ramos, 42, of Colton, pleaded guilty to 37 fraudulent claims and received $353,532 in benefits.
