| PPP Bank Fraud Nets Chinese
National Ma In SDNY Prosecution But No SBA
FOIA Response
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- The
Source
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
May 21 – Amid mounting fraud
in the U.S. Paycheck
Protection Program, including
banks and non-bank fintech
lenders refusing to report the
most basic data about what
they done with the money, an
investigative project of Inner
City Press, on May 21 there is
the arrest of Muge Ma, as
known as "Hummer Mars," a
Chinese national residing in
Manhattan.
Ma has been
arrested for a fraudulent
scheme to obtain over $20
million in
Government-guaranteed loans
designed to provide relief to
small businesses during the
novel coronavirus/COVID-19
pandemic.
In connection with loan
applications for relief
available from the Paycheck
Protection Program (“PPP”) and
the Economic Injury Disaster
Loan (“EIDL”) Program, MA
falsely represented to the SBA
and five financial
institutions that his
companies, New York
International Capital LLC
(“NYIC”) and Hurley Human
Resources LLC (“Hurley”), had
hundreds of employees and paid
millions of dollars in wages
to those employees, when, in
fact, MA appears to have been
the only employee of his
companies.
U.S.
District Court for the
Southern District of New York
U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S.
Berman said, "Ma allegedly
falsely represented in his
applications to banks and the
SBA to own two companies with
hundreds of employees to whom
he paid millions in wages. In
truth, Ma appears to be the
only employee of either
company and had no legitimate
claim to the funds for which
he applied.
SBA OIG Eastern Region Special
Agent-in-Charge Kevin
Kupperbusch said:
“Providing false statements to
gain access to SBA’s programs
will be aggressively
investigated by our
office. SBA OIG and its
law enforcement partners are
poised to root out fraud in
SBA’s programs and bring
wrongdoers to justice." But
SBA has no time to respond to
Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) requests?
From at
least in or about March 2020
through at least on or about
May 15, 2020, MA applied to
the SBA and at least five
banks for a total of over $20
million in
Government-guaranteed loans
for the his companies NYIC and
Hurley (together, the “Ma
Companies”) through the SBA’s
PPP and EIDL Program. In
connection with these loan
applications, MA represented,
among other things, that he
was the sole owner and
executive director of the Ma
Companies, that the Ma
Companies were located on the
sixth floor of his luxury
condominium building in New
York, New York, and that NYIC
and Hurley together had
hundreds of employees and paid
millions of dollars in wages
to those employees on a
monthly basis. In fact,
however, MA appears to have
been the only employee of NYIC
since at least in or about
2019, and Hurley does not
appear to have any
employees... A bank approved
and disbursed over
approximately $800,000 in PPP
loan funds for Hurley, which
were frozen in connection with
this investigation.
Inner City
Press will have more on this,
and other investigations. This
case is US v. Ma,
20-mj-5202 (Fox).
***
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