Richmond man convicted of PPP loan fraud, other felonies gets 17 years in prison
RICHMOND – A Richmond man convicted of dozens of felony charges related to a fraudulent business scheme was sentenced to 17 years in prison Wednesday.
Attila Colar, 51, was convicted by a U.S. District Court jury in June of 44 felonies, including conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Colar is the former CEO of All Hands on Deck, a Richmond-based company that said it provided a residential reentry program for probationers, parolees, homeless people and people with mild mental illnesses, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The jury found that Colar carried out multiple schemes, including defrauding organizations that placed residents at his company's transitional housing facilities and defrauding several lenders that were participating in the Paycheck Protection Program, federal prosecutors said in a news release Thursday.
"In the wake of a national crisis, the government established programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program, to ease the pain inflicted by a global pandemic," said Ismail Ramsey, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California. "Colar took this opportunity to defraud the government, while also defrauding several other initiatives intended to help the homeless, newly released prisoners, and those with drug problems, to name just a few of his victims."
The jury also found that Colar, also known as Dahood Sharieff Bey, Sharieff Dahood Bey, Sharieff Pasha, David Lee and Georgi Petrakov, made false statements to a bank, destroyed property to prevent a search, was a felon in possession of a firearm, filed false tax returns and tampered with a witness, among other things, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Prosecutors said that Colar submitted a total of 16 fraudulent loan applications to the PPP lending plan seeking roughly $34.7 million in PPP loans.
In addition to the prison sentence, Colar was ordered by U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. to complete five years of supervised release after his sentence and to pay an as-yet-unspecified amount in fines.