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MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Twin Cities man was sentenced Wednesday to 5 years behind bars for fraudulently making use of for greater than $9.6 million in COVID-19 enterprise aid funds.
The U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace District of Minnesota says that 47-year-old Aditya Raj Sharma, of Maple Grove, was sentenced to 60 months in jail adopted by two years of supervised launch.
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Final summer time, he pleaded responsible to making an attempt to defraud thousands and thousands of {dollars} from the federal Paycheck Safety Program (PPP), which was created to assist small companies keep afloat in the course of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In accordance with investigators, Sharma was fired from the Maple Grove tech firm he based in 2019. After the outbreak of the pandemic, he created three expertise firms and utilized for 16 loans by way of the PPP aid program. The loans totaled greater than $9.6 million.
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As a part of the scheme, he submitted false details about the variety of staff he had and the variety of payroll bills he incurred. He additionally made false statements about supposed use of the loans.
Three of the loans have been authorised and roughly $1.7 million in federal aid {dollars} have been deposited into Sharma’s accounts. However as a substitute of utilizing the funds for any of his companies, he payed offed money owed, funded different ventures, and made residence enhancements.
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Authorities seized roughly $675,000 in mortgage funds from Sharma’s financial institution accounts. As a part of his plea settlement, these funds have been forfeited to the U.S. authorities.
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