A Massachusetts man has been sentenced to more than four years in prison for attempting to defraud the US government by applying for forgivable COVID-19 relief loans for companies that he did not own before faking his suicide. communicated the Rhode Island District Attorney’s Office on October 7.
David Adler Staveley, 54, also known as Kurt David Sanborn, is the first person charged in the United States with fraudulently applying for small business aid loans due to the pandemic.
Staveley and his accomplice, David Andrew Butziger, claimed they owned three restaurants and a wireless service company, and borrowed nearly $ 600,000 from a Rhode Island bank to pay employees. However, the two applicants were not owners of the aforementioned businesses, two of which were even closed at the time of applying for the loans.
Federal Judge Mary S. McElroy he pointed that Staveley and Butziger’s strategy was a get-rich-easy scheme.
Staveley was tried and placed under house arrest in May 2020. However, he removed the electronic monitoring device and pretended to have taken his own life. To give more credibility to his scheme, he left his car near the ocean with his purse and a suicide note inside. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, between May 26 and July 23, 2020, Staveley traveled through various US states under a false identity and with a stolen car license plate. On July 23, 2020, he was arrested by the ‘sheriff’ of the city of Alpharetta, in Georgia.
Staveley was sentenced to 56 months in jail and three years of federally supervised release. For his part, Butziger pleaded guilty in September 2020 and will be sentenced on November 1.
