A Miami woman who lied and spent almost $400,000 (£313,788) of Covid-19 relief funds on luxury items has been sentenced to prison.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office, Daniela Rendon officially received her sentence of three and a half years after pleading guilty to fraud in April.
Ms Rendon spent $381,000 (£298,904) of Covid-19 relief loans to fund her lavish lifestyle.
The 31-year-old was granted the money under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Relief Program.
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Accorind to The Miami Herald, Rendon began falsifying records linked to her real estate business, which included her annual revenue, payroll, costs of products, IRS tax info and number of employees to qualify for the Covid-19 relief loans.
After she received the pandemic loan, she went on quite the shopping spree.
She leased a 2021 Bentley Bentayga, rented a luxury Biscayne Bay apartment, paid for cosmetic dermatology procedures, and refinished her designer shoes.
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Yep, doesn’t exactly scream emergency funds, does it?
Once the feds uncovered Rendon’s fraudulent checks, she was charged with seven counts of wire fraud, two counts of money laundering, and one count of aggravated identity theft.
According to The Miami Herald, Miami federal court said that Rendon had been ‘motivated by insatiable greed’.
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But the real estate agent said once she got caught, she realized that she hadn’t taken advantage of the ‘faceless entities of the US government', but instead the ‘countless individuals and businesses’ that had been walloped by an ‘unparalleled period of economic distress'.
Ms Rendon issued a 30-letter apology to the court, ultimately leading to her lenient sentence as she could’ve faced 20 years in prison, as per The New York Post.
“It’s not as easy to see that you’re really stealing from your neighbors, your friends and other citizens,” US District Judge K. Michael Moore, as per the outlet.
“It’s their money that goes to the Treasury that makes it possible to have these kinds of programs.”
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Along with her sentence, Rendon has also been ordered to repay the feds $198,990 (£127,520).
According to authorities, she is among the hundreds in South Florida of people who exploited Small Business America (SBA) loan programs, the Miami Herald reported.
The SBA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a new report that the country had lost over $200 billion (£100.5 billion) to fraud from schemes aimed at helping small businesses through the pandemic.
Charisa Bossinakis