Federal district · prosecutions
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington
14 pandemic-relief fraud prosecution records for the Western District of Washington, naming 11 defendants. By program: 10 PPP, 3 EIDL, 1 unemployment insurance. 7 have a case page in the archive. An amount is stated for 14 of them, from $473,082 to $25,000,000. Source dates run from 2021-08-10 to 2025-12-04.
Cases
11 defendants from 14 rows · 5 with a case page · sorted by amount, largest first
| Defendant | Case page | Program | Charge | Amount | Disposition | Sentence | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sakiru Olanrewaju Ambali | UI/EIDL | wire fraud and aggravated identity theft | $25,000,000 total claims sought for pandemic unemployment benefits | guilty plea | 42 months | 2024-03-14 | |
| Mukund Mohan | United States v. Mohan | PPP PPP, EIDL | wire fraud, money laundering wire fraud and money laundering | $5,500,000 attempted fraud amount; total amount sought in fraudulent applications $1,786,537 PPP proceeds received | plea guilty plea | 24 months | 2021-08-24 |
| Eric R. Shibley | United States v. Eric Shibley — W.D. Wash., No. CR20-0174-JCC | PPP/EIDL | wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering | $3,500,000 amount sought | trial | 48 months | 2022-03-08 |
| Paradise Williams | UI, ERAP, PPP, EIDL | wire fraud; money laundering | $2,000,000 personally received fraudulent proceeds | sentenced | 60 months | 2024-03-05 | |
| Fatiu Ismaila Lawal | United States v. Lawal — unemployment benefits case, W.D. Wash. at Tacoma | UI, EIDL | wire fraud and aggravated identity theft | $1,408,897.16 obtained | plea | 54 months | 2025-12-04 |
| Fatiu Lawal | United States v. Lawal — unemployment benefits case, W.D. Wash. at Tacoma | UI benefits | $1,345,472 restitution ordered | guilty plea | 54 months | ||
| Austin Hsu | PPP/EIDL | scheme to fraudulently obtain COVID-19 disaster relief loans Scheme to fraudulently obtain COVID-19 disaster relief loans (PPP and EIDL) | $1,100,000 attempted $709,104.97 proceeds received | plea | 24 months | 2021-08-10 | |
| Joseph M. Freeman | PPP | conspiring to defraud the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) | $646,000 conspiring to defraud... of | sentenced | 12 months | 2023-05-16 | |
| Abidemi Rufai | United States v. Abidemi Rufai — unemployment and EIDL case, W.D. Wash. | UI/EIDL/tax refunds | $604,260 restitution ordered | guilty plea | 60 months | ||
| Donte McClellon | PPP | three counts of wire fraud and two counts of bank fraud | $500,948 PPP loan proceeds obtained | sentenced | 42 months | 2024-05-29 | |
| Danni Walker | PPP | wire fraud | $473,082 steal | guilty plea | 3 years probation | 2024-03-13 |
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; 7 of the 14 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 Western District of Washington — every filing in the archive from this court, with the case pages it holds.