ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — When the new year started in 2020, few Americans knew the health danger our country would face.
COVID-19 seemingly came out of nowhere for most, leaving millions unprepared financially, emotionally and mentally.
The world was shuttered by the end of March, forcing most people to work from home and many businesses to close. The financial hardship was like nothing we’d ever seen in modern-day America.
The federal government sought to help, passing legislation that afforded laws to help local and state governments with a financial buffer and individuals with relief through loan and grant programs, costing the U.S. government billions.
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According to the U.S. Treasury, the Coronavirus Relief Fund, known as the CARES Act, provided for payments to state, local, and tribal governments navigating the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Some people, though, took advantage of the system, according to federal prosecutors, put in place to keep millions of hard-working Americans afloat.
Your tax money was used to invest in private real estate, purchase new homes, cars and even fund violent crimes, according to federal criminal complaints.
For weeks, 9 Investigates reviewed law enforcement and court records and learned more than 100 people in 35 counties in the state of Florida alone have now been charged with crimes related to stealing COVID relief money from taxpayers.
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For the first time, Channel 9 Anchor Daralene Jones spoke with the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida about their work to go after these thieves.
Through a public records request, 9 Investigates obtained a list of every defendant charged with federal crimes related to COVID-relief fraud. For one defendant in Seminole County, it was a tip that led federal investigators to a massive estate.
“What we often see, there’s really two different aspects of these cases. Sometimes the misrepresentations that someone makes to get one of these loans and then the other is the use of the money. And you can be prosecuted for either or both. And in his case, we had both,” U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg said.
The 12-acre, 12-thousand-square-foot property was purchased just five weeks after Don Cisternino received $7.2 million in emergency funds through a federal program set up to help businesses get through the COVID-19 pandemic.
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“What he did was, he had a business. And if you went to the website, you know, it would suggest that there was this business. And what he did was, he said to get one of these Paycheck Protection Program loans that he had 441 employees. And so that’s how PCP loans were determined. That’s how the amount of the loan was picked. He claimed to have over $2 million a month in payroll expenses. There were tax returns, there were payroll tax returns. There was information about all the different employees. But the reality was all of those documents had been falsified.
More than 100 defendants have already been convicted across Florida, and more cases are still pending. We had people who were making businesses up, businesses that didn’t exist. They then get a bank account and then they make false representations in the applications. They lie about how many employees they have. They lie about what their gross sales and revenues were.”
— U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg
The database we obtained shows the long list of defendants, spanning 35 Florida counties, that make up the Middle District of Florida. The fraud spanned from about $10,000, up to $8 million.
Jacquavius Smith, a known Orlando gang member, was convicted of obtaining and using the $10,000 he received to fund a lifestyle of violent crime, fully displayed on social media.
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Evan and Josh Edwards, under the guise of a religious group in New Smyrna Beach, were convicted of receiving $8 million and planned to buy a mansion near Disney, until they were caught and prosecuted.
Johnson Eustache was convicted of receiving $1.3 million and using it to invest in real estate in Brevard and Polk counties.
And Joel Greenburg, the former Seminole County tax collector, applied for a payroll protection program loan days before he was arrested on unrelated federal charges.
“A couple of days before he was federally arrested, and he didn’t know he was going to be arrested, he had submitted for a loan, saying he had been impacted by the pandemic and he needed this relief as working capital to be able to help,” Handberg explained.
Greenberg was the Seminole County Tax Collector, so it immediately raised a red flag for prosecutors who were investigating elected officials for other federal crimes.
“He actually got his first $2,000 payment on the day of his arrest [for the other crimes]. He was in court one day. The next day he gets the notice that his loan has been approved, and he signs it. Now, in the loan paperwork, it says, you know, please let us know or, you know, if there’s been an adverse thing that’s happened. And one of those things that’s listed is, have you been arrested? Well, he obviously didn’t disclose that. And what we were able to figure out was that wasn’t the only loan that he had gotten,” Handberg said.
The task force to focus on COVID-19 fraud was set up more than a year after the federal programs started, and Florida is one of five target states. Across the U.S., nearly four thousand people have been charged with fraud, and the feds have recovered more than $1.4 million of the more than $2 billion stolen from taxpayers, according to federal audits and reports.
But even the Government Accountability Officer acknowledged that COVID relief fraud would be a problem with a federal program this massive, cited in a 2023 report: Federal relief programs distributed funds quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While this was critical to assuring public health and economic stability, it also created unprecedented opportunities for fraud. The report goes on to state that the GAO has since discussed insights from our work on fraud in pandemic programs.
When program managers understand the fraud schemes that emerged during the pandemic, they can figure out what went wrong and mitigate related risks. We also highlighted our recommendations to agencies, matters for congressional action, and resources, such as our Fraud Risk Framework and Antifraud Resource, to better prevent fraud in federal programs.
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Congress has extended the statute of limitations to bring charges from 5 to 10 years, giving federal prosecutors more time to go after people who, so far, believe they’ve gotten over on the system.
Johnson Eustache, in a letter of apology, recalled how the U.S. government provided him asylum from Haiti. Telling the court he would offer no excuses for the bad decisions, only that he lost sight of the man he wanted to be, calling himself short-sighted and greedy.
Just last month, former state lawmaker Carolina Amesty was indicted. Federal prosecutors allege she obtained $122,000 with the help of fraudulent applications submitted for COVID relief funds. We have reached out to Amesty’s attorney.
“It’s really about holding people accountable for violating the trust, you know,” Handberg said.
Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by contacting the Justice Department’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
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