2023-10-31 06:44:46
A correctional officer from Miami-Dade County, in southern Florida, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for defrauding federal economic relief programs established due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Prosecutor’s Office reported this Monday.
Arashio Harris, 49, a sergeant with the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, must also pay $432,051 in restitution as a result of this sentence, which orders him three years of supervised release after serving his prison sentence.
According to the Attorney General’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, Harris was also owner and president of the companies The Good Family Property Solutions Inc. and Flying Lions LLC., in the name of which he applied for loans with the government’s Small Business Administration ( SBA, in English).
To do so, the convicted person submitted “false and fraudulent” information about both companies and, in the case of The Good Family, submitted a loan application that “greatly exaggerated” the payroll of this firm.
To support her application, Harris presented several “false and fabricated” 2019 IRS documents in which she claimed that The Good Family had a total income of more than one million dollars and had paid salaries and wages that year of more than $768,000.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, in February 2021 he submitted a second application to the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), again with false information and documents in the name of The Good Family.
Harris had previously pleaded guilty to wire fraud for these crimes.
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