A real estate owner in Miami, Florida, was sentenced to more than three years in prison for scamming the government out of $381,000 in COVID-19 relief funds.
According to the Miami Herald, 31-year-old Daniela Rendon was indicted on six additional counts of wire fraud, two counts of money laundering, and one count of aggravated identity theft, and then pleaded guilty in April to one count of wire fraud.
During her sentencing on Thursday, the Columbian-born Rendon said that she was “motivated by insatiable greed” and because it appeared that “everybody” was bilking their COVID-19 relief loans at the time.
“But after she got caught pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars, Rendon said she realized the victims of her crime were not the ‘faceless entities of the U.S. government’ but rather the ‘countless individuals and businesses’ that suffered during an “unparalleled period of economic distress,’” the news outlet reported.
U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore explained that Rendon’s confession and her lengthy 30-page apology convinced him to impose a light sentence and drop some of her charges, sparing her an extra year behind bars.
“It’s not as easy to see that you’re really stealing from your neighbors, your friends and other citizens,” Moore said. “It’s their money that goes to the Treasury that makes it possible to have these kinds of programs.”
The PPP con woman could have received a sentence of up to 20 years on the lone wire fraud charge. While Rendon’s defense attorney, Robert Mandell, requested only five years of probation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Bailyn recommended that the mother of three serve a three-and-a-half-year term.
She also has to repay $198,990 to the government in addition to her prison sentence.
The financial relief program was created by the Small Business Administration during the early days of the pandemic in an effort to help those struggling financially.
Rendon, however, is among those who took advantage of the program by falsifying records linked to her real estate business, such as her annual revenue, payroll, costs of products, IRS tax information, and number of employees, to qualify for the COVID relief funding.
