Mass. business owner gets three years in prison for attempted $13M COVID relief scam

The Massachusetts-primarily based proprietor of a tech startup has been sentenced to additional than three decades in jail for submitting fraudulent personal loan applications seeking much more than $13 million from different COVID relief plans.

Elijah Buoi, 40, of Winchester, was convicted in february of 4 counts of wire fraud and a person depend of building a untrue statement to a fiscal institution.

Federal prosecutors say Buoi submitted 6 fraudulent Paycheck Security Plan (PPP) apps on behalf of his firm, Sosuda Tech, LLC, to 4 distinctive Tiny Business enterprise Administration-accepted creditors. In each software, Buoi misrepresented the variety of workforce and payroll charges he had, when in truth his business had no U.S.-based mostly payroll or U.S.-based mostly staff, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Prosecutors say Buoi submitted fraudulent IRS tax kinds in assistance of his apps, ultimately acquiring a $2 million PPP financial loan. The governing administration was capable to get well roughly $1.97 million of these funds.

As portion of his sentence, Buoi ought to fork out restitution of $2 million and forfeit $2 million.

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