A Florida man convicted of fraudulently collecting more than $1.3 million in COVID-19 pandemic relief funds has been sentenced to five years in prison.
Johnson Eustache, of Palm Bay, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Orlando, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in August to wire fraud and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. He must also hand over some $700,000 seized from various bank accounts, as well as real estate in Palm Bay and Poinciana.
According to court documents, Eustache submitted 13 different fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) applications to the Small Business Administration and other lenders since March 2020 through April 2021. In all, he sought more than $2.1 million in emergency benefits related to the pandemic, the documents show.
According to prosecutors, Eustache included false statements on the applications regarding criminal records, number of employees and total payroll.
The lenders approved four PPP loans and four EIDL loans, totaling more than $1.3 million, officials added. Eustache used the money for personal financial investments, buying real estate, and building residential properties.
In addition to the pandemic relief program fraud, Eustache, while working as a tax return preparer, filed 28 returns for taxpayers from 2017 to 2021 that contained false adjustments, non-existent income amounts or fraudulent deductions, investigators added.
Eustache fraudulently included these false items to inflate the amount of refunds to taxpayers, and the total loss to the Treasury Department’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was $87,044, authorities said.