St. Louis County Woman Sentenced for Obtaining $263,000 in Fraudulent Pandemic Loans

Summary

An October 3, 2024 press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri announcing that U.S. District Judge Rodney W. Sippel sentenced Melissa T. Stevenson, 42, of Jennings to five years of probation and ordered her to pay $279,201 in restitution to the SBA after she pleaded guilty to one felony count of bank fraud. The release states that from March 2021 through December 2021 she submitted three fraudulent PPP applications, two for Our Love CDS and one for Drinks By Melissa, with inflated employee, payroll and income figures and a false IRS Form 940, obtaining $263,284. It says she spent the money on rent, credit card payments, a vehicle and retail purchases and falsely sought forgiveness by claiming it went to payroll.

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Full text

ST. LOUIS – U.S. District Judge Rodney W. Sippel on Thursday sentenced a woman from St. Louis County to five years of probation and ordered her to pay $279,201 in restitution for fraudulently obtaining loans that were supposed to go to struggling businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Melissa T. Stevenson, 42, of Jennings, pleaded guilty in May to one felony count of bank fraud. She admitted submitting three fraudulent applications for PPP loans from March 2021 through December 2021 that yielded a total of $263,284. The $279,201 Stevenson now owes to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) includes the amount of her Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans plus interest.
Stevenson submitted fraudulent applications for a PPP loan for a business named “Our Love CDS” on two occasions in 2021, she admitted in her plea. Both applications contained falsely inflated information about the number of employees and the monthly payroll and included a false IRS Form 940 (Employe's Annual Federal Unemployment Tax Return).
Stevenson fraudulently sought another loan for “Drinks By Melissa,” again falsely inflating income to maximize the loan she would receive, her plea says.
Stevenson said she would use the money to retain workers and for other business expenses that were permitted under the program but used the money for personal rent payments, credit card payments, a vehicle, retail purchases and payments to others. Stevenson also submitted applications for loan forgiveness for some of the PPP loans she received, falsely stating that she had spent all of the loan proceeds on payroll costs.

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www.justice.gov