Federal district · prosecutions
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California
6 pandemic-relief fraud prosecution records for the Southern District of California, naming 5 defendants. By program: 3 PPP, 1 unemployment insurance, 2 other or unclassified. None has a case page in the archive. An amount is stated for 6 of them, from $1,132,950 to $39,400,000. Source dates run from 2022-08-12 to 2025-04-11.
Cases
5 defendants from 6 rows · 0 with a case page · sorted by amount, largest first
| Defendant | Case page | Program | Charge | Amount | Disposition | Sentence | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Denny Thakorbhai Bhakta | PPP | securities fraud, bank fraud, money laundering | $39,400,000 loss alleged | jury trial | 235 months | 2025-02-28 | |
| Leronce Suel | PPP, RRF PPP | wire fraud, conspiracy, and tax crimes wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, tax evasion, conspiracy to defraud the United States, filing false tax returns, and failing to file tax returns | $1,773,245 fraudulent applications for COVID relief programs including PPP loans and RRF grants; COVID-related Paycheck Protection Program loans and Restaurant Revitalization Fund grants | trial | 42 months | 2025-04-11 | |
| Shawn Brown | UI | conspiracy, mail fraud | $1,400,000 obtained | sentenced | 78 months | 2024-04-24 | |
| Samir Haj | CARES Act general | unlawful importation, sale and mailing of an unregistered pesticide product | $1,132,950 proceeds from the sale of the badges | plea | 8 months | 2022-08-15 | |
| Samir Haj / Eco Shield LLC | COVID-19 PPE fraud (unregistered pesticide) | unlawful importation, sale and mailing of unregistered pesticide | $1,132,950 sales of unregistered EcoAirDoctor pesticide product | plea | 8 months | 2022-08-12 |
Data and method
Each row is one row of the pandemic-relief sentences table, printed as that table prints it: defendant, program, charge, amount and its basis, disposition, and the date of the source the row was read from. A blank cell is a blank cell in the table. The sentence column states the months of imprisonment the table records, or the years of probation where it records no custodial term. A case page is linked only where a case page in this district names the defendant; 0 of the 6 rows do. District is the table’s own district field, resolved to this court. Rows whose district field names only a state with more than one federal district are not placed on any district page. A date the table writes in another form is restated as YYYY-MM-DD; a cell that is not a date is printed as it stands. An amount of $1 billion or more is left out: those cells carry a program appropriation quoted in the source release, not a sum attributed to the defendant. Some defendants have more than one row because the table read them from more than one source.
Court hub: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California — every filing in the archive from this court, with the case pages it holds.