Posted: 08/24/2021 / 3:56 PM CDTUpdated: 8/24/2021 / 3:56 p.m. CDT
SEATTLE (AP) – A Washington state tech executive was sentenced to two years in prison after fraudulently obtaining nearly $ 1.8 million in federal COVID-19 disaster relief loans.
Clyde Hill’s Mukund Mohan previously worked for Microsoft and Amazon and was making more than $ 200,000 a year as the chief technology officer at Canadian e-commerce company BuildDirect when he was arrested in July 2020.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle said he had filed eight fraudulent loan applications for the paycheck protection program claiming $ 5.5 million for companies he allegedly ran and in fact received nearly $ 1.8 million -Dollar.
Mohan’s attorneys filed for a six-month sentence and found that Mohan had no previous convictions and had only spent $ 16,500 of the money. They said his actions, possibly triggered by mental health issues, were such an aberration for him that he passed out when federal agents knocked on his door.
Federal authorities were able to confiscate the money from Mohan’s accounts. He repaid the amount he had spent and was fined $ 100,000.
As part of the program, Mohan filed forged and altered documents, including fake federal tax returns and altered founding documents. He said one of his companies had dozens of employees when in reality it didn’t have any.
In a press release, Corinne Kalve, acting special agent for IRS Criminal Investigation, attributed the crime to Mohan’s greed, saying that when people abuse such aid programs, they are “stealing the most vulnerable.”
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