An Illinois tax preparer who helped run a “staggering” $14 million COVID scam used the money to build a mansion for a wife and kids he had in the Palestinian territories — infuriating his other wife in Illinois.
Sharhabeel Shreiteh, 46, received around $740,000 in kickbacks as he helped more than 1,000 people get phony Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans in what he admitted to one sidekick was likely the “most stupid fraud in history.”
Shreiteh used his own ill-gotten gains to build a home and a luxury Mercedes car for his wife and their three kids in Palestine — sending his American-based wife of nearly 18 years into a jealous rage, the Chicago Tribune reported.
“You suck!” Hania Atiq Shreiteh, his 52-year-old wife in America, texted him in July 2021 about the money he was sending to his family in his native Palestine.
“I bust my a– for 13 years and don’t have like she gets without working for it!!!” she wrote, according to messages in court filings.
“You gave her kids, a villa, now fancy cars??!! … I’m so sick and tired of being lied to by you.”
Shreiteh and Hania were married in 2008 and have a daughter in suburban Chicago. It was not clear when he married the other woman in Palestine, with whom he has three children and talked to every day, nor if they are still married.
However, Hania’s anger appeared to have subsided by the time the taxpayer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Tuesday.
“Having a second family aligns with his religious beliefs and was approved by his wife,” a court memo seeking a lighter sentence claimed. “He hopes that once the situation in the Middle East stabilizes, his other family can visit him here.”
Hellbound and Down 