Oregon Man Forced To Give Up Nearly 16,000 Tesla Shares After Stealing COVID-19 Relief Funds

A man in Oregon has been sentenced to prison for fraudulently taking pandemic small business relief funds and has been told to return over $18 million in Tesla stock and other properties.

According to the District of Oregon attorney’s office, 51-year-old Andrew Aaron Lloyd was directed to give up nearly 16,000 Tesla shares, 25 properties, and pay about $4 million in restitution for stealing funds meant for COVID-19 small business relief. The Eugene, Oregon, man was also sentenced to four years in prison. 

Lloyd’s scheme involved using the business names and personal identifications of family and other associates to apply for funds through the CARES Act, according to authorities. 

“Lloyd submitted false documentation to justify the loan amounts requested, including IRS forms listing the 2019 wages purportedly paid by entities controlled by Lloyd. Lloyd claimed these entities paid employees as much as $4.7 million,” authorities noted. 

Included in his application were the names of “purported employees” and the addresses of alleged business locations. He received six of the nine PPP loans he applied for granting him a total of $3.4 million in funds. Lloyd also got a $160,000 payment from an accepted  EIDL application, another program that was used to help small businesses impacted by the pandemic. 

With the funds, Lloyd invested in stocks, including nearly $2 million in one brokerage account, and bought property in Oregon and California. His stock investments reportedly did well, jumping in value very quickly before he was arrested just over a year ago. 

“In January 2021, agents seized Lloyd’s brokerage account, which included 15,740 shares of Tesla, Inc. purchased with proceeds of his fraud,” the attorney for the District of Oregon’s office noted. “In March 2021, agents seized another account containing more than $660,000 in securities and cash. The securities and cash seized from Lloyd’s accounts are presently valued at more than $18 million.”

Fraud pertaining to pandemic relief funds seems to be somewhat widespread with a New Jersey man sentenced to prison last month for stealing millions in funds and three more individuals were charged with COVID-19 insurance fraud on Thursday. 

Luigi J. Montes,  Alexander Hoyos Rivera, and Peter Alexander Stincer, “made their initial appearances in federal court today for their alleged roles in a conspiracy to apply for and use Nevada and California unemployment insurance benefits debit cards — approved for over $900,000 — that were issued in other peoples’ names,” according to authorities. 

Other pandemic related funding, like the stimulus funding, also seems to have gone out relatively indiscriminately with one of the terrorists in the Boston Marathon bombing even receiving a $1,400 check. 

“Prisoners were largely eligible to receive $1,400 payments included in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that President Joe Biden signed into law last March,” Newsweek reported. “Republicans unsuccessfully rallied against allowing inmates to receive the checks at the time, although prisoners were also not excluded from stimulus checks included in the GOP-backed Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act that former President Donald Trump had signed the previous year.”

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