United States v. Lawrence Phillip Hernandez

Case summary

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado announced that Lawrence Phillip Hernandez, 58, of Littleton, was charged by information with wire fraud for taking money he received through fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan applications. The charge in the information is an allegation; Hernandez is presumed innocent unless or until proven guilty.¹

According to the information, from March 30, 2020, until March 2021, Hernandez devised and participated in a scheme to defraud the United States and two lenders. He obtained $952,819 in loan and grant proceeds, it alleges, including more than $636,000 in PPP loans and $316,800 from the EIDL program. The money rested on false representations about his businesses' gross revenues, costs of goods sold, number of employees, payroll costs and past spending, and on fabricated tax and financial documents for 2019. Hernandez allegedly used a portion of the funds for personal expenses.¹

Hernandez was arraigned November 4, 2022, before Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter, in a case docketed 22-cr-318. The case was investigated by the FBI's Denver Division, with assistance from the SBA Office of Inspector General through the Colorado-based EIDL Fraud Task Force, and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Craig Fansler and Rebecca Weber.¹

Notes

1. U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado, "Littleton Man Charged with Covid Fraud" (original), November 4, 2022. ↩₁ ↩₂ ↩₃

Summary written from the documents on this page; every sentence is sourced.