FORT MYERS — A man from Palm Beach County was sentenced to two years in federal prison on Thursday. In January, he pleaded guilty to submitting false applications for government loans that were meant to help small businesses that were suffering get through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Al Clint LaRoche, who is 43 years old, got his term on May 11 in Fort Myers in front of U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Barber. In January, he admitted to two counts of bank fraud. This was because authorities said he stole $1.1 million.
LaRoche was told to give up that money as part of his punishment. Federal officials said that he used government loans to help himself, like buying a Mercedes-Benz SUV, jewelry, hotel stays, travel, and other things in stores.
Businesses had to use the money from Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to pay for things like salary, mortgage interest, rent, and utilities.
The program let the business get the interest and capital back if it spent the money on those costs within a certain amount of time and put at least a certain amount of the loan toward payroll costs.
In March 2020, Congress passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which stands for Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security. The goal of the economic stimulus bill was to help companies that were losing money because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Part of the bill set up the Paycheck Protection Program, which is backed by the Small Business Administration and gives small businesses money to cover up to eight weeks of salary costs, including benefits. In May 2021, the experiment was over.
Together with other government agencies, the U.S. Attorney General’s office set up the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to fight and stop fraud linked to the pandemic.
In March, the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office said that it had put together a task team to handle PPP fraud cases at the state level.
Court papers say that between April 2020 and April 2021, LaRoche sent fake first-draw and second-draw PPP applications for his suburban West Palm Beach business, Bornwild LLC, to a financial institution in Naples.
Prosecutors said that LaRoche’s loan applications lied about a lot of things, like the company’s average monthly payroll, and the number of workers, and that the loan money would be used for legal reasons.
LaRoche filed fake quarterly federal tax returns with false information about the business’s quarterly payroll costs to get each loan. Court papers say that the lender approved and paid for a first draw and a second draw PPP loan because of the lies.
