A New York woman was sentenced Friday to three years and nine months in prison for her role in the submission of fraudulent loan applications seeking more than $9.2 million in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
Sherry Joseph, 34, of New York, New York, pleaded guilty in Florida to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on Nov. 10, 2022.
According to court documents, Joseph recruited multiple individuals to apply for fraudulent PPP loans in exchange for kickbacks from their PPP loan proceeds.
Joseph used aliases to send the information of her recruits to co-conspirators, who used this information to prepare fraudulent PPP loan applications.
These documents included falsified bank statements and payroll tax forms and falsely represented the borrowing entities’ number of employees and amount of monthly payroll.
Joseph engaged in the scheme while on pretrial release for separate federal fraud-related offenses in the District of New Jersey.
In addition to her prison sentence, Joseph was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $1.6 million in restitution and $55,000 in forfeiture.
In total, 30 people have been charged for participating
in this scheme in the Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina.
All 30 of those defendants have been convicted.
Trial Attorney Philip Trout of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kiran Bhat for the Southern District of Florida prosecuted the case.