In Cincinnati, a 42-year-old man was sentenced to a 12-month and one-day prison term for committing fraud in relation to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Willie Boyce, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud in April 2023, will also pay $41,040 in restitution as part of his sentence.
Court documents reveal that Boyce, incarcerated in Hamilton County from March 2018 to September 2020, falsely claimed to operate a taxi and ridesharing business. Despite being in prison for the whole of 2019, he reported a gross income of $98,500 for that year in his PPP loan applications filed in April 2021. Boyce used his halfway house address as the business location and included a forged bank statement in his application.
After receiving two loan disbursements on April 20 and May 5, 2021, Boyce exhausted these funds by the end of May 2021. Investigations found that the money was spent on various personal expenses, including transactions with brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, as well as payments to service providers like Expedia, Hampton Inn, and Delta Airlines.
The case was investigated by multiple agencies, including the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, in collaboration with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Secret Service, Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles Investigations, and the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office. The United States was represented in this case by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Landry and Assistant U.S. Attorney Ebunoluwa Taiwo, as announced by Kenneth L. Parker, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.
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