U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle accepted the guilty plea of a 62-year-old Redmond man on Thursday for his role in a scheme to steal $646,000.00 in COVID-19 relief monies from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.<\/p>\n

Joseph Freeman set up shop with two firms to secure revolving Paycheck Protection Loans for the benefit of his fictitious workers.<\/p>\n

To steal half a million dollars from the PPP, Freeman, and his accomplices exploited data they had gathered in 2004. This theft was discovered in May 2020.<\/p>\n

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Freeman stated that Special Delivery LLC paid out $200,000 each month to its 15 employees, although in reality there was just Freeman working for the company.<\/p>\n

Freeman attempted to obtain $500,000 in PPP money by filing false IRS paperwork to give the appearance that his company had employees.<\/p>\n

The money from Freeman’s loan was deposited into his bank account on May 20th, 2020. After getting the money, Freeman set up a payroll service account to pay out to people who weren’t technically employees.<\/p>\n

Freeman and his accomplices submitted another bogus application on June 15, 2020.<\/p>\n

According to Freeman, New Jack Trucking LLC had 10 workers and paid them a total of $58,400 each month. Although the company never really conducted any business, Freeman and his partners claimed it had been in operation since February 2020.<\/p>\n

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The conspirators made it look like New Jack Trucking had workers by filing false tax returns and using a fictitious bank statement. Freeman and his accomplices got the $146,000 for the fake application on June 16, 2020.<\/p>\n

Freeman shared some of the wealth with the other conspirators and benefited personally from the rest.<\/p>\n

After federal authorities discovered the fraud in July 2020 and contacted Freeman’s bank, the bank froze and returned roughly $220,000 in loan proceeds to the Small Business Administration. In total, the program cost $426,666.<\/p>\n

On May 16th, 2023, Freeman will be given his punishment for his role in the fraud plot.<\/p>\n

The maximum penalty for conspiracy to steal government funds is five years in jail and a fine of $250,000 or twice the defendant’s gross monetary gain or twice the victims’ gross monetary loss, whichever is greater.<\/p>\n

The state’s attorney’s office has stipulated that they will recommend a sentence of no more than two years in jail for Freeman.<\/p>\n

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COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force was formed by the Attorney General on May 17, 2021, to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud.<\/p>\n

Go to www.justice.gov\/coronavirus to learn more about the department’s efforts to combat the pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle accepted the guilty plea of a 62-year-old Redmond man on Thursday for his role in a scheme to steal $646,000.00 in COVID-19 relief monies from the federal Paycheck Protection Program. Joseph Freeman set up shop with two firms to secure revolving Paycheck Protection Loans for the benefit of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":45801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[403,44,371,417],"class_list":{"0":"post-45800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-covid-19","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newsbreak","11":"tag-united-state-of-america"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newjerseylocalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}