The defendants sought help from the Small Business Administration (SBA) and an unnamed bank in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has paralyzed production for nearly two years.
District Attorney Muldrow has identified those involved in the fraudulent scheme as Manfred A. Bentzky Lemos, and Rudopleho R. Pidji Rossell, Augusto A. Lemos Berrios, Jonathan Ben-David Prieto Ruiz de Valle, Ligia Maria Lemos de Pintzky, and Carlos Manfredo Pintzky Chamorro.
Defendants and their aides filed for EIDL (Disaster Economic Injury) and PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loans.
“The defendants and conspirators recruited others to obtain loans using false pretenses under false pretenses,” Moldu told a news conference.
These individuals face charges that include conspiracy to commit wire fraud and twenty other individual counts of wire fraud involving funds received from PPP and EIDLE loans.
The head of the Puerto Rico Federal Attorney General’s Office has confirmed that they will continue to investigate more than 150 people linked to this fraud scheme.
“These are individual loan applicants and recruiters, so we’re also looking into whether any penalties might be appropriate for the financial institution that processed the loans,” Muldrow said.
The scheme, which was in effect from April 2020 to April 2023, allowed 272 loans totaling $9 million 20 thousand 590 to be made to pay off payroll and fixed debts to small businesses in the midst of the Covid-19 emergency. 19.
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