Who is Leslie Bethea? Tennessee woman spent $21K Covid relief loan to stay at Trump Florida Resort and get plastic surgery
GREENEVILLE, TENNESSEE: Leslie Bethea, a Hawkins County woman previously convicted of wire fraud in 2019 is now sentenced to 78 months for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan fraud and violating supervised release after spending about $8K of a $21K PPP loan. The money came from a Covid relief loan that she lied to obtain during the pandemic.
The US Attorney's Office in Greeneville said Judge J Ronnie Greer sentenced the 30-year-old to six and a half years in federal prison for defrauding the PPP loan program, states the court documents. It mentions that Bethea was previously sentenced to 24 months in prison for wire fraud in September 2019 and was released early on October 8, 2020. The feds said she was on supervised release when she applied for a $20,805 PPP loan on March 29, 2021.
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Details of fraud
The document states, "The fraudulent PPP loan application stated that Bethea had made $99,835 during calendar year 2019 (a year when Bethea was in prison), falsely claimed that Bethea had not been convicted of any fraud offenses during the past five years and attached a fraudulent income tax Schedule C as proof of her claim that she made $99,835. A PPP loan was approved based on Bethea’s fraudulent application, and Bethea received $20,805 on April 15, 2021. Bethea used a portion of the fraudulent loan proceeds to pay for a five-day junket at a resort in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida." As per DailyMail, she spent $3K for a five-day stay at the Trump International Beach Resort, where one-bedroom suits cost over $600 per night. She also used some of the fraudulent loan proceeds to pay for an elective cosmetic surgical procedure while being there. However, it is unknown what the plastic procedure was for.
However, upon her return to Tennessee, Bethea submitted a false monthly supervision report to her probation officer for the month of April 2021. In it, she falsely claimed that she had only received $200 during the month of April, had no expenses of more than $500, and had not traveled out of the state of Tennessee during the month of April 2021.
Who is Leslie Bethea?
On June 14, 2022, the Federal Grand Jury indicted Bethea for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements. She agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of making a false statement to her probation officer. Following Bethea’s imprisonment, she will be on supervised release for three years and is ordered to pay restitution totaling $20,805 on account of her theft.
What are PPP loans?
According to US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the loan provides eight weeks of cash-flow assistance to small businesses through 100 percent federally guaranteed loans to employers who maintain their payroll during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a fully forgivable loan intended to tide over people whose income was compromised by the pandemic.