A woman from Berkeley, Missouri, has been sentenced to two years in prison and fined $75,000 for committing fraud related to COVID-19 relief funds. U.S. District Judge Joshua M. Divine ordered Bridgette Johnson, 61, to repay the $129,000 she obtained through fraudulent means.
According to court documents, Johnson applied for more than $1.1 million in loans during the pandemic. She received $120,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by claiming that her business, Compassion at Home, would use the funds to retain employees and cover business expenses. However, she later sought forgiveness of the loan based on false statements about how the money was used and withdrew tens of thousands of dollars in cash from the account that received the PPP funds.
Johnson also admitted to submitting eight applications for Economic Injury Disaster Loans totaling $1 million through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), inflating both profits and employee numbers in her filings between 2020 and 2021 under her name and five businesses she controlled. Most of these applications were rejected after being flagged as fraudulent by the SBA, but Johnson did receive $9,000 in advances.
“Johnson used a global pandemic as an opportunity to enrich herself of approximately $130,000 at the expense of small businesses that desperately needed that money to pay their employees and keep their operations from shuttering,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Ladendorf stated in a sentencing memo.
Johnson pleaded guilty in October to one count of wire fraud.
The case was investigated by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Ladendorf.
Members of the public with information regarding pandemic-related fraud are encouraged to contact the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud via its hotline at 866-720-5721 or through its web complaint form at https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
