Louisiana Woman Charged with CARES Act Fraud — Chanel Galle Indicted for False Statements, New Orleans (2023)

Summary

A press release from USAO - Louisiana, Eastern, published February 14, 2023, announces that U.S. Attorney Duane A. Evans said Chanel Galle, of New Orleans, LA, age 44, was indicted on February 10, 2023, by a federal grand jury for two counts of making false statements related to the CARES Act. According to the charging documents, Galle made false statements to an approved lender on or about February 18, 2021, and received approximately $20,833.00 on a PPP loan, then received approximately $20,832.00 on a second PPP loan after falsely claiming to operate a beautician service. The release says each false statements count carries up to five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines, and that an indictment is merely a charge.

Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used

Full text

NEW ORLEANS –
U.S. Attorney Duane A. Evans announced that
CHANEL GALLE
, of New Orleans, LA, age 44, was indicted on February 10, 2023 by a federal grand jury for two counts of making false statements related to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act).
On March 27, 2020, The CARES Act became effective and established several new temporary programs and provided for the expansion of others to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Among these programs, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) authorized forgivable loans backed by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)  to small businesses to retain workers and maintain payroll, make mortgage interest payments, lease payments, and utility payments. The PPP allows the interest and principal on the PPP loan to be forgiven if the business spends the loan proceeds on these expense items within a designated period of time after receiving the proceeds and uses at least a certain percentage of the PPP loan proceeds on payroll expenses.
According to the charging documents,
GALLE
made false statements to an approved lender on or about February 18, 2021, for the purpose of fraudulently obtaining a PPP loan.
GALLE
falsely claimed in her PPP application that she had a certain number of employees and incurred payroll expenses for an LLC called Coco’s Companion Care.
GALLE
thereafter received approximately $20,833.00 based upon the misrepresentations.
GALLE
then made false statements to an approved lender on or about March 30, 2021, for the purpose of fraudulently obtaining a second PPP loan.
GALLE
received approximately $20,832.00 after falsely claiming that she operated a beautician service.
GALLE
faces a sentence of up to five years in prison, up to $250,000 in fines, and up to three years of supervised release for each false statements count. There is also a $100 mandatory special assessment fee per count due after conviction. U.S. Attorney Evans reiterated that an indictment is merely a charge and that the guilt of the defendant must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
For more information on the Department of Justice’s response to the pandemic, please visit
https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus
. Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at
https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form
.
U.S. Attorney Evans praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in investigating this matter.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward J. Rivera of the Financial Crimes Unit is in charge of the prosecution.

File and source

File

2023-02-14_louisiana-woman-charged-with-cares-act-fraud_0e4613cd.md.txt

Size

2,722 bytes

SHA-256

6f017ac2692a4bfb3e14e06745921b14016173c25d3afd891994e2d73acf97d3

Our copy

2023-02-14_louisiana-woman-charged-with-cares-act-fraud_0e4613cd.md.txt

Original

www.justice.gov