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James "Jimmy" Flores

Executive

PPP
Type
Person
Role
Executive
Programs
PPP
Updated

The profile

Co-founder of Blueacorn, who by his own plea papers received at least $24 million for his stake. Pleaded guilty on December 11, 2024 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud (N.D. Tex. 4:24-CR-306-Y) and testified for the government at Stephanie Hockridge's trial. Sentenced September 16, 2025 to 41 months; the amended judgment of September 25, 2025 sets restitution joint and several with Nathan Reis and Hockridge at $64,391,256.84.

Individuals whose conduct was challenged or called into question during or after the pandemic. See sources: Amended judgment, Sept. 25, 2025

In the archive

Identity and role

James "Jimmy" Flores was a co-founder of Blueacorn, the Arizona lender service provider that Nathan Reis, Stephanie Hockridge, and Noah Spirakus built in April 2020 to process Paycheck Protection Program applications. Press and the company's own early promotion referred to Flores as a Blueacorn founder and representative; in March 2021 he was the named Blueacorn contact in a partnership announcement with the real-estate-tech firm MooveGuru. He has been described as Blueacorn's president; no primary document we have gives him that title. His sworn factual resume says he and Michael Cota owned and operated a company called Qualytics, and that Flores and his co-conspirators "founded Blueacorn in 2020, purportedly to assist small businesses and individuals in obtaining PPP loans" (factual resume).

What he stipulated to

Flores's own factual resume, signed with his December 2024 plea, sets out his part (factual resume):

  • In about May 2020 he and Cota overstated Qualytics's 2019 payroll on a PPP application, and on May 15, 2020 Flores signed the promissory note for a $62,610 loan to Qualytics.
  • In about July 2020 Cota altered a bank statement to show a sole proprietorship apart from Qualytics, and Reis made a fake tax document showing Qualytics paid Flores over $106,000 in 2019. Flores used them to try for a PPP loan of about $20,006, first with a San Francisco lender and then with one in Redwood City. The resume does not say whether either funded it.
  • Blueacorn took a percentage of the fees the SBA paid its partner lenders, and the conspirators charged borrowers kickbacks through the "VIPPP" program.
  • "As a result of Flores selling his ownership interest in Blueacorn, he received payments of at least $24 million."

Reis's own factual resume, filed August 6, 2025, lists "July 2020 - James Flores" among the loans Reis and his coconspirators applied for under materially false representations (factual resume, Doc. 272). At Hockridge's June 2025 trial Flores testified as a government witness (American Banker).

Pandemic-relief role

Blueacorn was a lender service provider. It collected and screened PPP applications and forwarded approved ones to partner CDFIs — Prestamos in Phoenix and Capital Plus Financial in Bedford, Texas — for a share of the SBA processing fees. In 2021 it forwarded the 739,282 applications it told the Subcommittee it had approved and sent to lenders for funding. Blueacorn collected roughly $1.08 billion in fees. The House Select Subcommittee's report said Blueacorn and Womply together facilitated nearly one in three PPP loans funded in 2021 ("We Are Not the Fraud Police").

The charge concerned submitting applications they knew contained false information, and coaching fee-paying clients to do the same. Blueacorn's portal also routed applications to Capital Plus Financial in the Northern District of Texas, which is what placed the case there.

His own relief

The documented loan is Qualytics's $62,610 PPP loan of May 2020; the July 2020 sole-proprietor application for about $20,006 is described as an attempt (factual resume). The $24 million from the sale of his Blueacorn stake is the larger sum.

Flores was charged in the Northern District of Texas (Fort Worth Division), case 4:24-CR-306-Y, before U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means. Means also handled the related Qualytics defendants Michael Cota and Vivian Arriaga; Reis and Hockridge's case went to a different judge, Reed O'Connor. He was charged not by grand-jury indictment but by a one-count felony information filed December 5, 2024, with a forfeiture notice. On December 11, 2024, Flores waived indictment and pleaded guilty to that single count: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349 and 1343. The offense was charged as concluded May 31, 2021.

The sentence, imposed by Judge Means and entered September 17, 2025 (with a technical amended judgment a week later), was 41 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, plus a $100 special assessment. Flores was directed to surrender before October 13, 2025.

The amended judgment (doc 84, September 25, 2025) orders Flores to pay $64,391,256.84 jointly and severally with Nathan Reis and Stephanie Hockridge, corrected from $64,844,573.00 in the original judgment (doc 79). It adds joint-and-several amounts of $45,617.75 with Arriaga and $83,929.49 with Cota.

Since 2025

Flores was set to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons before October 13, 2025 to begin his 41-month term. No appeal or later business appears in the records we have as of mid-2026. Reis was sentenced on December 18, 2025 (DOJ release; see Nathan Reis).

Documents on this site

Original source documents and archived copies

Sources

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