A former TV news anchor and her husband have been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly defrauding themselves to obtain COVID-19 relief money — a crime that could land them both behind bars for decades if convicted.
Stephanie Hockridge-Reis, 41, and Nathan Reis, 45, allegedly submitted false and fraudulent applications for federal government Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans for themselves and their businesses even though they were not eligible.
Hockridge-Reis, a former news anchor for ABC15-TV in Phoenix, and her husband co-founded Blueacorn, a lending service provider purportedly founded to help small businesses and individuals obtain COVID-19 relief funds.
According to federal prosecutors, Hockridge-Reis and Reis fabricated documents such as payroll records, tax documentation and bank statements to obtain the loans.
The Justice Department alleged that the pair charged clients illegal fees for their services based on a percentage of the funds received.
Both are also alleged to have recruited people to work as referral agents, who then coached borrowers on how to submit fake PPP loan applications.
“To get a larger volume of kickbacks from borrowers and a percentage of lenders’ fees from [Small Business Administration]Reis, Hockridge and their associates submitted PPP loan applications that they knew contained materially false information,” according to the Justice Department.
The DOJ complaint does not cite a total dollar figure for the alleged fraud committed by the couple.
In 2022, a congressional panel released a report that found that Blueacorn received approximately $300 million in profits. The company told lawmakers it collected more than $1 billion in fees for processing PPP applications, but also incurred about $700 million in expenses.
The report alleged that Blueacorn did not prioritize small businesses and instead sought to obtain loans for larger clients in order to earn higher commissions.
Hockridge-Reis and Reis are also alleged to have personally raised $300,000 in PPP loans, which were helped in part by their company, according to a report by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.
According to the Arizona Republic, individuals who reviewed loan applications for Blueacorn told congressional investigators that they should place more emphasis on speed than on verifying whether the applications were legitimate.
“I mean … I don’t believe in prioritizing bigger loans over smaller ones … but, we have to have an understanding that when we start … closing these monster loans is going to pay off the everyone,” Hockridge-Reis said in a message received on Slack. from the commission.
In another Slack message obtained by congressional investigators, Hockridge-Reis wrote: “Delete them (small loans). Who the f—— cares. We’re not the first bank to turn down borrowers who deserve funding.”
Her husband allegedly filled out a loan application in which he “falsely claimed to be an African-American and a veteran,” according to the panel’s report.
Contact information for the couple’s attorney was not immediately available.
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