Pandemic related fraud leads to prison sentence

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(The Center Square) – Creation and dissemination of fake documents during the COVID-19 era through two websites led a federal judge in Georgia on Wednesday to order a South Carolina resident to pay $386,960.50 in restitution and go to jail for two years and three months.

Kimani Bracey of Simpsonville, S.C., will then have three years of supervised release, said Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr. Bracey appeared in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Information leading to prosecution was traced through the Paycheck Protection Program, a component of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act signed into law in 2020.

Bracey sold fake tax returns, bank records and employment verification documents. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud in June and knew the documents were being used to commit fraud, prosecutors said. 

“During a time of unprecedented national peril, Kimani Bracey took advantage of a pandemic and profited off helping others steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds,” said Marlo Graham, special agent in charge of FBI Atlanta.

The Trump administration has barred more than 1 million people tied to Paycheck Protection Program fraud from receiving future loans from the Small Business Administration. 

Vice President J.D. Vance said in September that 870,000 people tied to nearly $39 billion in government loan fraud would be suspended from future loans. More than 150,000 tied to $10 billion in fraud in California, Ohio, Minnesota, Maine, and Wisconsin were previously suspended. 

"As it happens with so many of the programs that are born out of the generosity of the American taxpayer, we had many, many people who took advantage of those programs," Vance said in September.