Maple Grove Man Gets 5 Years For Fraudulently Applying For COVID-19 Business Relief
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A Twin Cities man was sentenced Wednesday to five years behind bars for fraudulently applying for more than $9.6 million in COVID-19 business relief funds.
The U.S. Attorney's Office District of Minnesota says that 47-year-old Aditya Raj Sharma, of Maple Grove, was sentenced to 60 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release.
Last summer, he pleaded guilty to trying to defraud millions of dollars from the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was created to help small businesses stay afloat during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to investigators, Sharma was fired from the Maple Grove tech company he founded in 2019. After the outbreak of the pandemic, he created three technology companies and applied for 16 loans through the PPP relief program. The loans totaled more than $9.6 million.
As part of the scheme, he submitted false information about the number of employees he had and the number of payroll expenses he incurred. He also made false statements about intended use of the loans.
Three of the loans were approved and roughly $1.7 million in federal relief dollars were deposited into Sharma's accounts. But instead of using the funds for any of his businesses, he payed offed debts, funded other ventures, and made home improvements.
Authorities seized roughly $675,000 in loan funds from Sharma's bank accounts. As part of his plea agreement, these funds were forfeited to the U.S. government.