Lehigh Valley Man Pleads Guilty to Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Fraud and Defrauding Local Car Dealerships — Eastern District of Pennsylvania, February 26, 2026
Summary
Federal press release datelined Philadelphia in which United States Attorney David Metcalf announces that Justin Heimbach, 34, of Bath, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty before United States District Judge John M. Younge to six counts of mail fraud and four counts of wire fraud, charged by indictment in August 2024. The release explains that the CARES Act, passed in March of 2020, created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA) for people not eligible for regular unemployment compensation. According to court filings, Heimbach, who operated TeamKJ Construction, defrauded the federal government and multiple local car dealerships.
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“Lehigh Valley Man Pleads Guilty to Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Fraud and Defrauding Local Car Dealerships — Eastern District of Pennsylvania, February 26, 2026.”
Original at www.justice.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/doj-usao-edpa-press-release-lehigh-valley-man-pleads-guilty-pandemic-u-ce644fbca6/
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PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney David Metcalf announced that Justin Heimbach, 34, of Bath, Pennsylvania, entered a plea of guilty today before United States District Judge John M. Younge on six counts of mail fraud and four counts of wire fraud. The defendant was charged with those offenses by indictment in August 2024, arising from his schemes to defraud the federal government and multiple local car dealerships. In March of 2020, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), which created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA). The PUA program provided unemployment benefits to individuals not eligible for regular unemployment compensation, or extended unemployment benefits. As detailed in court filings and admitted to by the defendant, Heimbach, who operated a construction company called TeamKJ Construction, engaged in a scheme that caused fraudulent PUA applications to be filed in the names of individuals allegedly no longer employed by TeamKJ as a result of COVID-19. In reality, the applications contained a number of materially false statements, including that the applicant had lost their job with TeamKJ as a result of COVID-19 and the date the applicant lost their job with TeamKJ due to the pandemic. In addition, Heimbach successfully defrauded multiple Lehigh Valley car dealerships by purchasing vehicles in the names of other construction companies registered to or associated with him, and writing checks for those vehicles on bank accounts that had an insufficient balance to cover the transaction. The defendant is scheduled to be sentenced on June 11, 2026. This case was jointly investigated by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, and FBI Philadelphia’s Allentown Resident Agency and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney S. Chandler Harris.
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