A suburban Chicago man has been sentenced to over five years in prison for his involvement in a fraudulent scheme to obtain more than $1.5 million in small business loans under the CARES Act. Feroz Jalal participated in this scheme over a five-month period in 2021, defrauding banks and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), part of the SBA's efforts, allowed small businesses to receive low-interest loans during the Covid pandemic. Jalal submitted at least a dozen applications for PPP loans on behalf of businesses he and others claimed to own. These applications included false statements about employees, revenues, costs, and operational statuses. Jalal also provided fake IRS tax filings and fabricated spreadsheets to support these claims.
Jalal and his co-schemers submitted fraudulent loan applications totaling $1.792 million, resulting in $1.644 million being disbursed by lenders.
Jalal, 51, from Niles, Illinois, pleaded guilty last year to charges of bank fraud and money laundering. On February 11, 2025, U.S. District Judge John F. Kness sentenced him to five years and two months in federal prison and ordered him to pay restitution exceeding $1.5 million to the SBA.
The sentencing was announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Douglas S. DePodesta, Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI's Chicago Field Office; and Sean Fitzgerald, Special Agent-in-Charge of Homeland Security Investigations' Chicago office. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General provided substantial assistance in this case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Hayes represented the government.
Individuals with information regarding attempted Covid-relief fraud are encouraged to report it by calling the National Center for Disaster Fraud at (866) 720-5721 or filing an online complaint at https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
