A Norway man was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison and ordered to pay $253,646 in restitution for filing fraudulent loan applications with the federal Paycheck Protection Program.
Merton Weed Jr., 52, pleaded guilty on October 23, 2023.
Between May 2020 and January 2021, Weed filed eight loan applications to the COVID relief program with four different lenders and received $243,745 in PPP funding, according to court records cited by the U.S. Department of Justice in a news release.
On the fraudulent applications, Weed listed false average monthly payrolls and numbers of employees for phony businesses that did not exist. He supported the applications with falsified bank records, according to the DOJ.
The FBI investigated the case.
The Paycheck Protection Program was a COVID-19 pandemic relief program administered by the Small Business Administration that issued forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and some other expenses.
