A U.S. Customs and Border Safety officer was arrested after he allegedly used two sham companies to illegally request and obtain almost $150,000 from a COVID-19 pandemic reduction program meant for small-business house owners, authorities mentioned this week.
Amer Aldarawsheh, 45, was indicted Wednesday on 5 counts of wire fraud. He’s accused of deliberately deceptive the U.S. Small Enterprise Administration and mishandling mortgage funds, in line with the U.S. legal professional’s workplace.
He has pleaded not responsible.
In 2020 and 2021, prosecutors say, the Moreno Valley man utilized for loans below the SBA’s Financial Harm Catastrophe Mortgage program on behalf of two companies: Nahar Enterprises Inc., which was described as a San Bernardino-based trucking and freight firm; and Ameral, a purported automotive restore firm.
Nevertheless, investigators later discovered that neither firm had “substantial enterprise or workers,” in line with a press release from the U.S. legal professional’s workplace.
“Aldarawsheh knowingly misappropriated and misused the EIDL funds he obtained from the SBA for his personal private profit,” federal prosecutors alleged within the assertion, citing a December 2020 switch of just about $150,000 in mortgage funds to a checking account they mentioned was “below his management.”
Aldarawsheh, who’s going through a sentence of as much as 20 years in federal jail, was launched on $30,000 bond, authorities mentioned. A consultant from U.S. Customs and Border Safety didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark about his employment standing.
The Small Enterprise Administration has estimated that, in an effort to extra rapidly distribute reduction, it gave out greater than $200 billion in probably fraudulent funds by way of its COVID-19-era catastrophe mortgage packages.
