Her sentencing is about for May 28 within the Southern District of Florida.
The authentic story follows beneath.
The record of South Florida police division staff who allegedly scammed the federal authorities’s pandemic reduction applications has been rising steadily over the previous two years. From Miami to Coral Springs, present and former regulation enforcement employees have been charged with fraudulently milking COVID-19-related loans — and the crackdown continues.
This time round, the accused additionally occurs to be the sister of Miami Heat legend and retired energy ahead Udonis Haslem.
Federal prosecutors say Sheana Haslem, a staffing specialist for the Miami Police Department, submitted fraudulent functions for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program in 2020 and 2021. Haslem acquired virtually $31,000 from the reduction applications by the scheme, in accordance with the charging doc.
With the help of an “unnamed particular person,” prosecutors allege, Haslem despatched a fraudulent EIDL software claiming to be an impartial contractor and proprietor of a profitable hair-and-nail salon enterprise. In her software, she made bogus claims that the enterprise had 15 staff and gross income of almost $90,000 from January 31, 2019, to January 31, 2020, the feds say.
Following her request for EIDL funds, Sheana Haslem allegedly submitted a rip-off software for a PPP mortgage for a safety officer enterprise.
Prosecutors say she falsely represented that her common month-to-month payroll for the enterprise was $8,333 and submitted an Internal Revenue Service Form 1040 (Schedule C) for 2019. “That fraudulent Schedule C falsely claimed that Haslem’s enterprise had a gross revenue of $102,874, no bills, and a web revenue of $102,874,” the charging doc states.
Haslem finally acquired almost $21,000 in PPP mortgage cash from a lender not named within the court docket file. She is charged with one depend of wire fraud, which carries a most penalty of 20 years in jail and a $250,000 high-quality.
Enacted in March 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act approved the Paycheck Protection Program to offer forgivable loans to companies making an attempt to remain afloat through the coronavirus pandemic.
The stimulus invoice additionally empowered the Small Business Administration to present out EIDL cash to qualifying small companies that had been grappling with vital monetary disruption resulting from COVID-related closures and lockdowns. The program supplied $10,000 advances that didn’t need to be paid again.
Florida grew to become a scorching spot for fraudulent COVID-19 mortgage exercise, and in September 2022, the Department of Justice introduced the U.S. Attorney’s Office within the Southern District of Florida would lead one in every of three nationwide “COVID-19 fraud strike power groups.” South Florida federal prosecutors had seized greater than $23.5 million in stolen reduction funds and charged defendants in additional than 80 instances as of September 2022.
Law enforcement officers and police division staff have been on the heart of quite a few instances of COVID-19 reduction schemes in South Florida.
In October 2022, an ex-Coral Springs police officer pleaded responsible to defrauding the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. In April 2023, a former Miami police officer pleaded responsible to felony wire fraud for submitting misleading paperwork to money in on COVID-19 reduction funds.
Last October, prosecutors carried out essentially the most sweeping bust on pandemic mortgage fraud in South Florida so far, asserting federal fraud prices in opposition to 17 Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO) staff for allegedly fleecing reduction applications in separate schemes. Just final week, a former BSO jail lieutenant was charged with two counts of wire fraud after prosecutors accused him of fraudulently acquiring almost $168,000 in PPP loans.