After Hours: Following the Tax Money with Covid Relief Fraud

Full Measure After Hours

Sharyl Attkisson

News, News Commentary

4.9 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Billions of your tax dollars have already been lost to Covid-19 relief fraudsters and cons. The scams and amounts of money are outrageous. Subscribe to my two podcasts: “The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast” and “Full Measure After Hours.” Leave a review, subscribe and share with your friends! Order “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism” by Sharyl Attkisson at Harper Collins, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, IndieBound, Bookshop! Visit JustTheNews.com, SharylAttkisson.com and www.FullMeasure.news for original reporting. Do your own research. Make up your own mind. Think for yourself. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sharylattkisson/supportSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody, Cheryl Ackerson here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure After
0:10.8	Hours. Today, you'll hear some outrageous cases of COVID-19 relief fraud. What are the
0:17.0	schemes and scams and who stealing millions of your tax dollars?
0:26.6	I'm going to start today's podcast by reading from a press release that was just put out
0:31.8	by the Department of Justice, a U.S. Attorney's Office in Texas. It's headlined, Liberian
0:37.4	National pleads guilty to $23 million in COVID-19 relief fraud. According to the press release,
0:45.8	it says a Liberian National who orchestrated a fraudulent scheme to secure more than $23
0:51.2	million in forgivable paycheck protection program loans. Forgivable loans, by the way,
0:57.1	means these people generally do not have to pay back the money. It's basically free cash.
1:01.2	In a way, this Liberian National pleaded guilty to a federal financial crime. His name is
1:07.8	Stephen Jelal, a 43-year-old tax consultant from the Dallas area. The press release says he was
1:14.4	first charged in September 2020. He's now pleaded guilty. According to plea papers reading from
1:21.0	the press release, Mr. Jelalul admitted he defrauded lenders participating in the paycheck protection
1:27.3	program, a measure authorized by Congress in the early days of the pandemic, to award forgivable
1:32.6	loans to small businesses impacted by COVID-19, actually by the shutdowns. And it says he was
1:38.8	participating in this fraud while awaiting sentencing in a separate tax fraud case. In court documents,
1:46.0	says the news release, he admitted that he submitted roughly 170 falsified PPP loan applications
1:53.9	to lenders, including through a FinTech company, seeking more than $23 million on behalf of over
2:01.0	160 clients of his tax preparation business, which was called royalty tax and financial services
2:07.4	LLC. Mr. Jelalul admitted he inflated clients' employee rosters and monthly payroll expenses
2:14.5	in order to increase the amount of funds for which their businesses would be eligible. He
2:18.9	generally charged the clients a two to 20 percent commission on the PPP loans they received and
	...

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