U.S. attorneys in eastern Va. prosecuted 50 in '22 for stealing millions in COVID relief funds

RICHMOND - The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia prosecuted 50 people in 2022 for attempting to swindle the government and associated financial institutions out of nearly $125 million in COVID-19 relief funds. "But there is still considerable work to be done," the office's chief attorney says.

Last year's effort topped the work done in 2021, when the office prosecuted 30 people who attempted to steal $105 million in pandemic aid.

Last year's most egregious case involved Quin Ngoc Rudin, 55, a felon who was sentenced in October in Alexandria to 10 years in prison; he pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to defraud the federal Paycheck Protection Program out of $43 million by preparing dozens of false loan applications. Rudin sought to steal $100 million, and the fraud occurred while he was on supervised release after serving 5 years for another massive fraud scheme, federal prosecutors said.

Rudin's conviction included defrauding the IRS by filing false income tax returns on behalf of at least night professional athletes. He pocketed $19 million.

Two of the largest cases prosecuted in Richmond last year included Sadie Mitchell, 30, a state employee who used her position to bilk Virginia and the U.S. out of $1.2 million in pandemic relief funds; and Moe Mathews, 51, a local real estate developer and investor who defrauded the Small Business Administration and associated financial institutions out of $1.1 million.

In terms of the financial loss, the cases involving Mitchell and Mathews were in the top ten of major COVID-related fraud schemes prosecuted in Virginia's Eastern District - ranking fifth and sixth. Prosecutors said Mitchell and Mathews sought to steal $1.8 and $1.7 million, respectively.

Mitchell, 30, was sentenced in September in U.S. District Court in Richmond to nearly seven years in federal prison; Mathews was sentenced in October to a term of 3.4 years.

Mitchell, a program support technician with the Virginia Motor Vehicle Dealer Board, submitted bogus applications using the identities of state prison inmates and exploited the personal information of Virginians she obtained from a government database. She used the information to file bogus claims for pandemic unemployment assistance, unemployment insurance, paycheck protection loan funds and economic injury disaster loan payments.

Her boyfriend, Lamar Jones, conspired in the scheme. He was killed in a December 2021 fatal shooting in Richmond and never charged.

Prosecutors said Mathews, as co-owner and manager of Fresh Start Properties Solutions LLC based in Rockville, among other ventures, robbed the government relief program designed to save businesses and their employees from the economic impact of the pandemic. He and and an unnamed co-conspirator submitted at least 38 fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program applications.

"Our country has been dealing with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic for over two years now, but there is still considerable work to be done," Jessica Aber, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement. "We continue to uncover more CARES Act fraud almost every day."

"The COVID landscape has changed dramatically in the past year but what has not changed is our dedication to recovering every possible dollar defrauded from these programs," she added. "We will continue to use a range of civil and criminal tools, in addition to interagency partnerships, to meet this goal."

The defendants convicted of COVID fraud are require to make restitution as part of their dispositions.

Mitchell was ordered to repay a total of $1,158,674 to the Virginia Employment Commission, the federal Small Business Administration and a financial institution in Arizona. Mathews is required to pay $1,166,941 to the SBA and the eight financial institutions that lost money through his schemes.

Virginia prison inmates also cashed in, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In June, Keith Scott Smith Jr., 41, an inmate of the Baskerville Correctional Center in Mecklenburg County, was sentenced to nearly three more years behind bars for defrauding the VEC out of $233,984 in COVID-relief unemployment funds. He recruited fellow prisoners to provide their personal information, and that information was passed to his wife, Virginia Smith, to file at least 22 fraudulent claims for unemployment insurance and pandemic unemployment assistance. She also pleaded guilty in the scheme.

"He took advantage of the system," U.S. District Judge David J. Novak said in sentencing Smith to 33 months, which will run consecutive to a 10 year sentence he received in 2018 for maliciously wounding his former girlfriend in Chesterfield County. "During this tragic time, when the government was pumping money out to people to survive, you got crooks in jail getting money. This is ridiculous. I think [Smith's] conduct is utterly offensive."

"The crooks are getting all the money to the detriment of working people," the judge added. "The fact that this was committed while he was incarcerated makes it even more mind-boggling."