SAUGUS — Former Saugus resident Vinicius Santana, 34, was arrested and charged with allegedly filing a fraudulent loan application to obtain $2.5 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan funds under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
Santana, who now lives in Boca Raton, Florida, was arrested at Miami International Airport and will appear in federal court in Massachusetts at a future date to face a charge of wire fraud, according to a statement Wednesday from the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston.
According to the charging documents, Santana owned Complete Home Care, LLC (CHC), a painting company in Massachusetts. In CHC’s Certificate of Organization, Santana listed himself as the company’s “Resident Agent” and his wife, A.P., as its “Soc Signatory,” affidavit filed in court reads. Santana registered CHC in Revere, the document says.
In April 2020, Santana submitted four different PPP loan applications on behalf of CHC. The first three applications, in which Santana allegedly listed five employees and an average monthly payroll of between $10,000 and $18,000, were denied.
In his fourth application Santana claimed to have 154 employees and an average monthly payroll of $1 million. In May 2020 a bank issued Santana’s company a $2.5 million loan based on that application. Santana allegedly misused the loan proceeds to buy cars and invest in cryptocurrency.
The accusation is based on the following assumptions. There are clear contradictions between the three unsuccessful loan applications and the fourth successful application. All of the applications list the same business name, address, owner, and business phone number, but they list different average monthly payroll figures and numbers of employees.
None of Santana’s bank records reflect the payroll activity that Santana represented in the fourth PPP loan application, and his IRS tax returns indicate that Santana did not file the purported Form 944 that he included in the successful PPP loan application. The IRS has confirmed that it does not have any independent tax filings from Santana.
If convicted, Santana might face a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000, or twice the gross gain or loss from the scheme, whichever is greater. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge.
The CARES Act is a federal law that was enacted on March 29, 2020, designed to provide emergency financial assistance to the Americans who are suffering the economic effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2021, the attorney general established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to bolster efforts to assist agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud.
Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at (866)-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
Oksana Kotkina can be reached at [email protected].
