A Northwood man pleaded guilty to bank fraud and wire fraud in federal court on Tuesday after attempting to obtain over $3.5 million in Cares Act funding, federal officials said.
Between March 2020 and November 2021, Joshua Leavitt, 40, fraudulently applied for over two dozen loans under the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs, according to court documents. His co-defendant, who was not named, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
As a result of the applications, Leavitt and his co-defendant applied for and were granted a $175,000 PPP loan from TD Bank to fund the monthly $70,000 payroll for one of their companies, Puro Group, to pay six employees, prosecutors said. However, Leavitt submitted false tax documents claiming its employees were paid a total of $210,000 in the first quarter of 2020. Yet the real tax filings showed that Puro Group paid only $48,255.53 to its employees during the entire calendar year of 2020.
In another instance, Leavitt applied for and was granted a $29,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan and $7,000 Economic Injury Disaster Grant for a second company, Monticello Transnational. The application falsely claimed that the company’s gross revenue for the preceding year was $75,000. However, bank records showed that employees were not paid and that the company only had a few thousand dollars worth of deposits. Additionally, taxes were not filed on behalf of the company in 2019 or the first quarter of 2020, prosecutors said.
Leavitt was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $869,475.50 and will be sentenced on Jan. 11, 2023.
This case was investigated by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, Secret Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The case is being prosecuted by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Chen.