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A Florida man has been sentenced to six months in federal prison for lying to get a low-interest COVID-19 relief loan, the Associated Press reported. Willie Curry was sentenced on Wednesday in Miami federal court, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in August to wire fraud in connection with his fraudulent application to the U.S. Small Business Administration. According to a plea agreement, Curry applied for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan with the SBA in June 2020. He falsely claimed that Will Curry Computers was established in 2015 and had annual gross revenues of approximately $755,416, a cost of goods sold of approximately $170,664, and 10 employees. Prosecutors said Curry actually established the business in 2020, and it had minimal revenues or costs of goods sold and no employees. Curry actually worked full-time as a network manager for Miami-Dade County and suffered no loss of salary from the COVID-19 pandemic, investigator said.

A bankruptcy judge threatened to send two shareholders of Eagle Hospitality Real Estate Investment Trust to jail, finding the “fraudsters” had defied court orders to account for an illicit $2.4 million government loan, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Taylor Woods and Howard Wu took out a government-backed loan on behalf of the bankrupt hotel company “without authority and absconded with the proceeds,” leaving either Eagle Hospitality or the taxpayer on the hook, according to yesterday’s ruling by Judge Christopher Sontchi of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. “Messrs. Woods and Wu are fraudsters,” the judge wrote in an opinion published Monday. He said that he would consider what sanctions to impose, including potential incarceration, at a hearing on Friday. The judge had previously ordered the two men to account for the government funds they received and show that they’ve not dissipated their assets. Eagle Hospitality filed for bankruptcy in January and was broken up in chapter 11, selling 14 of its hotels for $480 million and turning over the keys to 1930s ocean liner Queen Mary, which it had leased from the city of Long Beach, Calif. In May, Eagle Hospitality sued Mr. Woods and Mr. Wu, seeking to recover $2.4 million in funds it alleged they received on behalf of the Queen Mary operations under the Paycheck Protection Program, the popular program of forgivable, government-guaranteed loans designed to keep checks flowing to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the Netflix hit series “Squid Game,” characters gamble with their lives. The price of playing the game in the real world may not be as steep as a life, but for many people who piled their money into Squid, a once red-hot cryptocurrency named after the show, the financial loss has still been significant, the Washington Post reported. On early Monday morning, the value of a Squid coin collapsed from a high of just over $2,860 to effectively zero as cryptocurrency traders watched the token’s unknown creators clean out some $3.3 million in funds, according to digital records. The maneuver, known as a “rug pull” in cryptocurrency circles, occurs when a token’s creators abandon the project by exchanging many virtual coins for real-world cash. They quickly drain liquidity from the product, effectively driving the coin’s value to zero and leaving other investors holding the bag in an apparent scam. “Squid Game Dev does not want to continue running the project,” the developers wrote on their Telegram channel Monday, saying they were “depressed” by scammers and “overwhelmed with stress.” Launched late last month, the new cryptocurrency skyrocketed in value as investors rushed to buy tokens hyped by promotions on multiple social media platforms. The project’s Twitter account — since restricted by the social network because of “unusual activity” — amassed more than 57,000 followers, and its Telegram channel had more than 71,000 subscribers.

The top executives of defunct cybersecurity company GigaMedia Access Corp. have been charged with duping investors out of more than $50 million by faking financial statements and having one of them pose as a customer, Bloomberg News reported. Robert Bernardi, the founder and former chief executive officer of GigaMedia, which also did business as GigaTrust; Nihat Cardak, the company’s former chief financial officer; and Sunil Chandra, its former vice president for international business development, were arrested on fraud charges Wednesday morning and scheduled to appear in federal court in Virginia later in the day, prosecutors in New York said. They were also sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bernardi and Cardak are accused of using fabricated bank statements to obtain multiple rounds of loans and investments for the company, which filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in November 2019. Prosecutors said they made up fake statements that overstated the amount of cash deposits, concocted false audit materials that exaggerated the company’s performance, and forged a letter from its lawyers. Chandra was additionally charged with aggravated identity theft for allegedly posing as one of GigaTrust’s customers in order to secure a $25 million loan to the company.

Consumers have lost $586 million to fraud linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data from the Federal Trade Commission, CNBC.com reported. Americans filed more than 269,000 fraud complaints from the beginning of 2020 to Oct. 14, 2021, according to most recent federal data. (Consumers cited Covid, stimulus or related terms in the complaints.) The typical victim (as measured by the median) lost $392, in a range of schemes targeting online shoppers, travelers and others. The losses skew higher for older Americans: Seniors over age 80 lost $1,000 each. However, pandemic-related scams appear to be declining, officials report. There were 273 consumer complaints filed Thursday (as measured by the rolling 14-day average), according to FTC data. That’s the lowest level since March 16, 2020. It’s also about eight times less than the 2,100-daily-complaint peak in early April this year, around the time Covid vaccinations were beginning to be deployed more broadly and the federal government was issuing $1,400 stimulus checks authorized by the American Rescue Plan. Online shopping accounted for the largest number of reported scams to the FTC, at about 57,600 complaints.

Private-equity firm HIG Capital agreed to pay $20 million to resolve Medicaid fraud charges related to a behavioral-health provider that it owned, Bloomberg News reported. The agreement comes three years after Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed a civil fraud case alleging that HIG disregarded an employee’s complaint that Community Intervention Services was using unsupervised, unlicensed therapists to care for patients. Two former heads of CIS agreed to pay a total of $5 million. The defendants, accused of causing fraudulent claims to be submitted to the state’s Medicaid program, didn’t admit liability or wrongdoing. In earlier court filings, the companies denied that false claims were filed, that the whistle-blower alerted them or that care suffered. The settlement with Massachusetts and the U.S. Department of Justice is one of the largest by a private-equity firm in a false-claims case, in which a corporate whistle-blower brings a fraud allegation to the federal government.

A man admitted in federal court in New Jersey that he participated in a scheme to fraudulently try to obtain nearly $7 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans, the Associated Press reported. Gregory Blotnick pleaded guilty Wednesday to wire fraud and money laundering. Blotnick, who lives in New York and Florida, submitted 21 fraudulent PPP loan applications to 13 lenders on behalf of nine purported businesses that Blotnick controlled from April 2020 through March 2021, according to court documents. The forgivable loans were created to help small businesses retain jobs and cover other expenses during the coronavirus pandemic. Blotnick falsified employment and income records and managed to obtain $4.6 million in funds, prosecutors said. They said he transferred the money into brokerage accounts from which he placed more than approximately $3 million in losing stock trades. The charge of wire fraud carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of the greater of $250,000, twice the gross profits or loss, whichever is greatest, prosecutors said. The charge of money laundering carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gross gain to the defendant or gross loss to the victim, whichever is greatest. His sentencing is scheduled for March 2022.

A Rhode Island man was sentenced Tuesday to almost seven years in prison for fraudulently seeking more than $4.7 million in forgivable federal loans meant for businesses struggling during the coronavirus pandemic while he was still on probation from a previous conviction, federal prosecutors said, the Associated Press reported. Michael Moller filed 11 fraudulent applications for Paycheck Protection Program loans, federal prosecutors said in an emailed statement. He used his own name, as well as the names of his father, his girlfriend’s brother, and his girlfriend’s son to apply for the loans to pay employees at businesses that did not exist, authorities said. He actually received almost $600,000, some of which he used for a trip to Las Vegas, home renovations, and a car, prosecutors said. He was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Providence to five years and 10 months for the loan scam, and another year for violating the terms of his release on a federal bank robbery conviction. He was also ordered to pay full restitution. Moller also has multiple convictions in state and federal courts for larceny and tax fraud, authorities said.