Owner of Boston Area Pizzerias Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for Defrauding U.S. Small Business Administration (April 2, 2025)

Summary

Press release of the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Massachusetts, dated April 2, 2025. U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley sentenced Stavros Papantoniadis, the owner of Stash's Pizza, to two years in prison followed by one year of supervised release, and ordered $534,462.01 in restitution, after a plea to one count of false statements. The release says that between November 2021 and January 2022 Papantoniadis applied to the Small Business Administration (SBA) for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan, falsely stating that a Randolph pizzeria was still owned and operated with 18 employees after the business had been sold, and the SBA sent $499,900. Six months of the sentence run consecutive to a 102-month sentence on forced labor convictions.

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“Owner of Boston Area Pizzerias Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for Defrauding U.S. Small Business Administration (April 2, 2025).” Original at www.oig.dol.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/2025-04-04-owner-of-boston-area-pizzerias-sentenced-to-two-years-in-pr-4ac29b59f1/, SHA-256 c4bed6d98dee43bfd5a14f8cc51ec86ee4ba1522abd2783cad14ab9f36460246.

Full text

PRESS RELEASE

Owner of Boston Area Pizzerias Sentenced
to Two Years in Prison for Defrauding U.S.
Small Business Administration
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
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For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Massachusetts

BOSTON – The owner of Stash’s Pizza was sentenced today in federal court in Boston for
submitting false information to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to obtain a
loan on behalf of a business he no longer owned.

Stavros Papantoniadis, a/k/a “Steve Papantoniadis,” 50, of Westwood, was sentenced by
U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley to two years in prison, to be followed by one year of
supervised release. Papantoniadis was also ordered to pay $534,462.01 in restitution. In
February 2025, Papantoniadis pleaded guilty to a Superseding Information charging one
count of false statements.

Papantoniadis is the owner and operator of Stash’s Pizza, a chain of pizzerias in greater
Boston. In April 2021, Papantoniadis sold one of his pizzerias located in Randolph, Mass.,
and the Secretary of State subsequently cancelled the limited liability company through
which Papantoniadis owned the Randolph pizzeria.

Between November 2021 and January 2022, Papantoniadis applied for an Economic
Injury Disaster Loan from the SBA. These loans were designed to provide relief for
existing small businesses that suffered substantial economic injury during the COVID-19
pandemic. In his submissions to the SBA, Papantoniadis falsely stated that he still owned
and operated the pizzeria in Randolph, even claiming that he then had 18 employees at
the location. However, in reality, Papantoniadis had sold the business several months
before he applied for the loan. Based on Papantoniadis’ false representations, the SBA
approved the loan and sent Papantoniadis $499,900.

In June 2024, Papantoniadis was convicted by a federal jury of three counts of forced
labor and three counts of attempted forced labor. Based on evidence introduced at trial,
Papantoniadis forced or attempted to force five men and one woman to work for him
through violent physical abuse, threats of abuse and repeated threats to report victims
to immigration authorities for deportation if they did not continue working for him. In
October 2024, Papantoniadis was sentenced to 102 months in prison, one year of
supervised release and ordered to pay a $35,000 fine. Six months of the sentence
imposed today will run consecutive the 102-month sentence the court imposed in June
2024.

U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley; Michael J. Krol, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland
Security Investigations in New England; and Jonathan Mellone, Special Agent in Charge
of the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, Northeast Region made
the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Timothy E. Moran, Chief of the
Organized Crime & Gang Unit and Brian A. Fogerty of the Human Trafficking & Civil
Rights Unit prosecuted the case.

On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement
Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with
agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-
related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most
culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with
administering relief programs to prevent fraud by augmenting and incorporating
existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover
fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and
insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more information on the
department’s response to the pandemic,
please https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus and https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus/co
mbatingfraud.

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 via the NCDF Web Complaint Form.

Updated April 2, 2025

Topics
CORONAVIRUS

FINANCIAL FRAUD
Component
USAO - Massachusetts

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