Articles · Courts and enforcement
Reported article
Stolen EIDL Money, a $77,898 Ford F-350 and a Seven-Week Run
In July 2020, a small business owner reported to the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office that someone had used his, his wife's, and his company's personal information to open bank accounts in Boston. The trail led investigators to a man calling himself Daniel Cohen, later identified as David Unitan.1
Unitan had filed six EIDL applications using the small business owner's Social Security number. Two were funded, totaling $295,000, disbursed to the Boston account in June and July 2020. On June 24, 2020, he moved $100,000 out of that account to another bank and wired $77,898 to a Ford dealership in Hillsboro, Oregon.1
At the dealership, a man using the name Daniel Cohen bought a 2020 Ford F-350 Super Duty Lariat for $77,898. He presented a counterfeit California driver's license and arrived in a 2020 Tesla Model X whose insurance card he used as part of the purchase paperwork. That Tesla had recently been impounded by Lake Oswego police; Unitan had been driving it on a suspended license.1 The business owner who'd reported the fraud confirmed he'd previously hired Unitan for video production work, and that the photo on the fake license was Unitan's.
Federal agents arrested Unitan on December 22, 2020, on a criminal complaint charging wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering, seizing the truck, the Tesla, and digital evidence showing he'd applied for dozens of EIDL and PPP loans.1 After his arrest, his pretrial services officer caught him spending from an unauthorized account and asked to meet. Unitan fled instead, taking his girlfriend and her child on a seven-week run before U.S. Marshals found them in a Marysville, Washington hotel in March 2021.1
A federal grand jury had indicted Unitan while he was still a fugitive. He pleaded guilty to all three charges on October 29, 2021, and on February 22, 2022 was sentenced to 61 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release.1