NEVADA

Authorities accused a woman of illegally seeking more than $1 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans.

Karen Chapon, aka Karen Hannafious, 50, of Las Vegas, Nevada, was charged by criminal complaint in federal court in Nevada with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. 

The complaint alleges that, in support of her six fraudulent loan applications, Chapon made numerous false and misleading statements about her companies’ respective business operations and payroll expenses, and falsely denied that she had been convicted of a felony in the past five years.   

The complaint also alleges that, in further support of the fraudulent loan applications, Chapon submitted fake and altered documents, including fraudulent federal tax filings. 

For example, Chapon misrepresented to a lender that, in 2019, her company Heavenly Tahoe Properties paid several million dollars in employee wages. 

In support of Chapon’s loan application, she submitted a fraudulent IRS filing that appeared to be Heavenly Tahoe Properties’ 2019 Form 940 federal unemployment tax return showing that the company paid nearly $2.5 million in employee wages that year. 

In reality, the IRS has no record of the company filing any 2019 tax returns, and publicly available records show that the company’s Nevada corporate registration is no longer valid.     

The government has executed seizure warrants recovering the majority of the nearly $600,000 in PPP loan proceeds that Chapon obtained in her alleged fraud, including more than $500,000 from the bank account of one of her companies and a Mercedes Benz SUV, according to officials.

Chapon is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

DOJ NOTED:

Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.