PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney David Metcalf announced that Treva Harris, 50, of Medford, New Jersey, was sentenced to 12 months and one day of imprisonment, three years of supervised release, a $7,500 fine, a $100 special assessment, and $535,000 in restitution by United States District Judge John F. Murphy for fraudulently obtaining a loan award of approximately $535,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”), established by the federal government to provide emergency financial assistance to small businesses and their workers suffering the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The defendant was charged by information in August of last year and pleaded guilty in October to one count of bank fraud, waiving prosecution by indictment.
As detailed in court filings and statements, in 2020, Harris applied for and received multiple pandemic relief loans backed by the United States Small Business Administration (“SBA”), including two loans for a Philadelphia childcare business named Child Prodigy Education Center (“CPEC”).
The first of the two loans was an Economic Injury Disaster Loan (“EIDL”) that resulted in approximately $514,900 in disbursements to Harris. Harris’s EIDL loan application, originally submitted in April 2020, accurately represented that her childcare business had only three employees, gross income of $165,907 for the past 12 months, and $113,420 in “cost of goods sold” (i.e. payroll).
However, just two months later, Harris submitted a separate PPP loan application for CPEC, including fabricated IRS documentation, in which she falsely claimed that CPEC actually had 27 employees and a monthly payroll of $214,000, or $2,568,000 annually. Based on that application, she received a loan of $535,000, much of which she promptly misspent on personal luxury retail purchases, large cash withdrawals, and checks written to her boyfriend’s business.
On April 7, the Department of Justice announced the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division (“Fraud Division”). The Fraud Division is laser-focused on investigating and prosecuting those who commit fraud against the American people. The Department’s work to combat fraud supports President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a whole-of-government effort chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.
This case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys S. Chandler Harris and Matthew T. Newcomer.
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