Federal officials stated that two brothers pleaded guilty Thursday to participating in a scheme to file fraudulent loan applications seeking approximately $7.6 million in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.
Officials stated that the Small Business Administration (SBA) guaranteed these funds under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
Officials stated that this money was deposited into an account controlled by El, which the brothers used for their investments, personal expenses, and home improvements.
According to court documents, between April and September 2020, Larry Jordan, 45, of Lancaster, New York, and Sutukh El, aka Curtis Jordan, aka Hugo Hurt, aka Hugo Hermes Hurtington, 41, of Buffalo, New York, conspired to submit eight fraudulent PPP loan applications on behalf of companies they owned or controlled.
The defendants submitted three applications to Evolve Bank & Trust and five to Lendio, a financial technology company based in Utah.
The applications contained false statements about the 2019 payroll expenses of each company, which the SBA used to calculate the amount of PPP funds to which the applicant companies would be entitled.
To corroborate the applications, Jordan and El submitted IRS forms, which they had never filed with the IRS, as well as fraudulent payroll registers that purported to identify the names, personal information, and salary of the employees placed on the PPP applications.
The brothers are scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 17.
They are each facing up to 30 years in prison.
Jordan also pleaded guilty to bank fraud and faces up to 30 years on that charge. In addition, officials stated that he was convicted of criminally derived property and faces up to 10 years in prison.
Trial Attorneys Ariel Glasner and Della Sentilles of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles Kruly and Grace Carducci for the Western District of New York are prosecuting the case.
Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Justice Department’s National Center for Disaster Fraud Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.