A South Thomaston man was sentenced to 1.5 years for a scheme in which he received more than $1 million by filing fraudulent loan applications to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a COVID-19 relief program that issued forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and certain other expenses.
Mark X. Haley II, 43, was sentenced in U.S. District Court to serve 18 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $1,010,581 in restitution, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release.
Haley pleaded guilty on February 8.
Over a period of 18 months, Haley listed false employee and payroll information on each application and submitted fraudulent supporting documents to banks, including false federal employment tax returns, fake timesheets and falsified bank records, according to the DOJ.
In total, he attempted to steal nearly $1.5 million and succeeded in getting $1,010,581.
He used some of the money to make a down payment on a sailboat, which the DOJ says he then claimed was itself a functioning business with multiple employees in an attempt to get more PPP money.
