A 32-year-old Oakland girl who was arrested and charged final yr in a scheme to defraud the federal authorities out of $4.5 million in pandemic aid funds has simply been sentenced to 3 years in jail and must pay over $1 million in restitution.
Christina Burden, who resided in Oakland however was arrested in Austin, Texas in February 2021, is an accountant by commerce, and federal prosecutors discovered that she created a number of shell corporations in 2020, together with one referred to as “Blessing Field Co LLC” and one referred to as “Burden Consulting Group LLC,” and utilized for hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in Payroll Safety Program (PPP) and Financial Harm Catastrophe Mortgage Program (EIDL) loans. Although she was self-employed as an administrative marketing consultant and accountant, Burden claimed in falsified paperwork to have 89 staff and a month-to-month payroll of $700,000.
In whole she filed 10 functions for loans totaling $4.5 million, and he or she efficiently acquired over $1 million, together with $992,291 in fraudulent PPP loans. Investigators discovered that quite than use the funds to maintain actual corporations afloat, Burden spent the cash on lavish journey bills like personal jets and lodges, and $124,000 was spent on luxurious purchases from Louis Vuitton, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom. One other $150,000 was spent on three autos, together with a Mercedes Benz and a Land Rover.
In accordance with a Thursday launch from the Division of Justice, Burden pleaded responsible to 2 counts of financial institution fraud and two counts of cash laundering.
United States District Choose Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sentenced Burden to 36 months in federal jail plus three years of supervised launch. Moreover, she must pay $1,143,191 in restitution to the feds.
The utmost sentence Burden might have confronted was 30 years.
“Those that want to defraud packages designed to assist these in want ought to know that the FBI and our companions will pursue each investigative device accessible to us to make sure the integrity of these packages and that they continue to be accessible to our neighborhood’s small enterprise homeowners,” stated FBI San Francisco Particular Agent in Cost Craig Truthful when Burden’s costs have been first filed.
The PPP and EIDL packages got here out of the Coronavirus Assist, Aid, and Financial Safety (CARES) Act, handed by Congress in late March 2020, simply as pandemic-related lockdowns shut down giant sections of the U.S. economic system, inflicting hardships at many ranges. The PPP program issued a complete of $800 billion in loans, all of which could possibly be forgiven if companies maintained staffing at pre-pandemic ranges, and in the event that they spent 60% of the funds on payroll — with the rest on mortgage, lease, utilities, and different eligible bills.
An educational working paper launched final August steered that 15% of the loans granted, or $76 billion price, had at the very least one indicator for potential fraud. The examine pointed to fintech corporations who have been serving to administer this system loans for exhibiting the very best charge of potential fraud of their mortgage information.
The DOJ has been at work prosecuting a number of vital circumstances of alleged fraud, together with 4 people in Richmond and Sugar Land, Texas, who obtained $18 million in fraudulent PPP loans and utilized for a complete of $35 million in loans. These 4 people have been charged in December.
Picture: Giorgio Trovato