Lee Price III of Houston, Texas, was sentenced on November 29 to nine years and two months in prison after spending $1.6 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan money on strip clubs, a Lamborghini, and a Rolex watch.
As we previously reported, Price pleaded guilty in September to wire fraud and money laundering after acquiring the funds by providing an incorrect number of employees and payroll expenses for three different businesses.
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According to the criminal complaint, on one of his applications, Price said that his small business, Price Enterprises, had 50 employees with an approximate monthly payroll of $375,000. After investigations, authorities found that his company had no employees, no payroll, and no evidence of him hiring anyone.
ABC News reported that in an email to the outlet, Price’s lawyer Tom Berg said, “Mr. Price hopes that others will learn from his reckoning that there is no easy money.”
“He has the balance of the 110-month sentence to reflect, repent and rebuild his misspent life,” Berg added.
According to the Washington Post, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses all over the nation were forced to shut down and couldn’t provide the same services as they usually would. For this reason, business owners sought out help from the government, and in March of 2020, a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package was signed.
The emergency spending bill provided billions of dollars towards forgivable loans for small businesses to cost the expenses to stay afloat.
However, this also led to folks abusing the bill and reporting fraudulent business expenses. The Justice Department has reportedly caught over 150 defendants with PPP fraud and taken back over $75 million illegally obtained.
According to officials, a Texas man was charged in March of this year after obtaining $17 million in fraudulent PPP applications and utilizing the money to purchase eight homes and luxury cars.
