An Ohio lady and former bakery proprietor was sentenced to 6 years in jail and was ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution for stealing the identification of a useless child and fraudulently acquiring a pandemic aid mortgage.
The lady, Ava Misseldine, 50, was sentenced on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Columbus, Ohio, in accordance with courtroom paperwork, greater than 10 months after pleading responsible to 16 counts of wire and passport fraud.
“Ava was very remorseful over her past criminal behavior, and, at sentencing she read a very emotional statement accepting responsibility for her actions,” Alan Pfeuffer, a lawyer representing Ms. Misseldine, stated in a press release on Wednesday, including that she had outlined “plans to seek counseling while in prison.”
As per the plea deal, which was outlined by the U.S. Attorney’s Office final yr, Mr. Pfeuffer confirmed that Ms. Misseldine had already paid over $300,000 from the sale of a house in Michigan that she had purchased utilizing cash from her Paycheck Protection Program mortgage. Another house she owns in Utah is in the marketplace, he stated, and proceeds from that sale ought to convey her inside just a few hundred thousand {dollars} of creating full restitution for her theft of P.P.P. funds.
She acquired the cash in 2020, utilizing her actual title and a faux one. Her mortgage utility, which included solid paperwork, listed her companies as a number of bakeries and catering firms.
Ms. Misseldine’s crimes date again to 2003, when she utilized for an Ohio ID, and later a Social Security card and driver’s license, utilizing the identification of a child who died in 1979.
Four years later, she continued her crime spree, utilizing the stolen identification to acquire a scholar pilot certificates and a U.S. passport. Ms. Misseldine claimed she wanted the passport to journey internationally as a flight attendant for JetSelect, the place she was employed beneath the false identification. JetSelect is a personal aviation firm that’s based mostly in Columbus.
She continued to acquire identification paperwork utilizing her actual and faux names, however by 2021, the authorities began investigating Ms. Misseldine’s actions after she tried to resume the fraudulent passport.
She was arrested in June 2022 in Utah, the place she had relocated and obtained driver’s licenses in each names.
Federal officers have been working to crack down on pandemic fraud and recoup billions of {dollars} that have been falsely obtained. Investigators have taken up novel methods to root out what officers say have been an unlimited variety of fraudulent claims that have been submitted and permitted through the pandemic.
Officials with the Small Business Administration stated that greater than $200 billion, or at the least 17 p.c of the roughly $1.2 trillion in pandemic loans that the company gave out, landed within the palms of “potentially fraudulent actors.”
In November, 17 public staff have been charged in schemes to defraud Covid aid packages. They collectively stole greater than $1.5 million from the federal Small Business Administration and monetary establishments that issued assured loans. The cash was spent on private bills, like playing, shares, furnishings and luxurious clothes.
Not everybody who stole cash used it to fund lavish life; some have gone to higher extremes. In February 2022, the authorities stated a Florida lady had used a part of a $15,000 P.P.P. mortgage to pay successful man.
Source: www.nytimes.com