Tag: fraud

Co-Founder of Paycheck Protection Program Service Sentenced for $63M COVID-19 Relief Fraud Scheme

A co-founder of a lender service provider was sentenced to 10 years in prison for defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program by $63 million.

Court documents say that Stephanie Hockridge, also known as Stephanie Reis, 42, of Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, and previously of Arizona, co-founded Blueacorn in April 2020, purportedly to assist small businesses and individuals in obtaining PPP loans.

The U.S. Small Business Administration guaranteed the loans under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. The defendant was also ordered to pay over $63 million in restitution.

Hockridge and her co-conspirators fabricated documents, including payroll records, tax documentation and bank statements. Hockridge and her co-conspirators charged borrowers kickbacks based on a percentage of the funds received.

Hockridge and others offered a personalized service to their clients called “VIPPP” to help potential borrowers complete PPP loan applications. Hockridge recruited co-conspirators to work as VIPPP referral agents and coach borrowers on how to submit false PPP loan applications. To get more kickbacks from borrowers and a higher percentage of lender fees from the SBA, Hockridge and her co-conspirators submitted PPP loan applications that they knew contained materially false information. In total, Hockridge and her coconspirators processed over $63 million in fraudulent PPP loans.

On June 20, a jury found Hockridge guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould for the Northern District of Texas; Acting Assistant Special Agent in Charge Don Daley of the Office of Inspector General for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Western Region; and Special Agent in Charge Christopher J. Altemus Jr. of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Dallas Field Office made the announcement.

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The Problem Of Fake Science

Don’t eat those waffles; your hair will fall out. Science says so!

Think of this. We’ve never before been in the position to generate such seemingly scientific content on any subject under the sun within a matter of seconds. This power has only existed for two years. Many people do not even know it exists, much less how easy it is. Bad actors are in a position to use this power anytime they want. They can count on legacy levels of trust in “science” to pass off such fakery as real.

This past week, we saw yet another piece of fake science retracted from publication. This one is a big deal. The publication is The Lancet, one of the most prestigious venues in the world. It had published the study, which was thoroughly peer-reviewed. But it turns out that the authors had pulled the wool over the eyes of the experts.

The retracted paper is one of many generated from a huge and well-funded trial of therapeutic drugs used to treat COVID-19. The trial in question was called TOGETHER. It was funded with grants from FTX, the crypto company later shut down for fraud, alongside financial companies holding large pharmaceutical stocks and think tanks funded by the industry that hoped to sell vaccines. If the study was correct, getting the shot would seem like the only option.

The authors peppered all the journals with papers on the results.

Only one has been pulled so far, but the others will likely do the same in time. This includes the New England Journal of Medicine, a venue that prides itself on its low retraction rate.

The TOGETHER trial was conducted then released fully four years ago. Questions and criticisms have been roiling and boiling all this time.

When the study came out in 2021, it was invoked as one of the major reasons to pull hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin from the shelves. Even if your own doctor wrote a prescription, the answer was no.

I will never forget that day when I walked into my neighborhood pharmacy and showed them my prescription. The girl behind the counter excused herself to talk to her manager, who shook his head no without saying a word. That sent me on a scramble to get some sent by overnight mail from New York City, from a person who had ordered some from India. I felt better in three hours.

I later learned that although millions of people did something similar, because it was the only way to get effective meds, the practice is, shall we say, frowned upon.

Why had all the pharmacies in my local neighborhood denied me proven treatments that my own doctor had prescribed me? Because they believed the science.

This is the problem of fake science. It has real-world consequences. We supposedly live in the age of science, but the credibility of all the institutions is now in free fall. The slogan “science” was deployed to justify a level of attack on freedom that we had never before seen. As a result, the reputation of science in general has taken a huge hit.

The TOGETHER trial at least had the appearance of plausibility. After all, they had actually done a real trial. The SURGISPHERE trial, in contrast, released early on in the summer of 2020, was discovered to have entirely made up all its data. Its conclusions were thereby invalid. And to be fair, the fake science was not entirely one-sided. Some studies indicating the reverse results have also been shown to have faked data.

In the end, hundreds of thousands of papers during this period were published, and these days, the retractions are happening as quickly as the acceptances in the old days. My friends, this is not just a PR problem. This is a genuine crisis for the credibility of science itself.

When the science tells you that you cannot safely have a Thanksgiving dinner in your home or sing praises to God without killing grandma, it is risking the very foundations of the scientific revolution.

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Disgraced ex-news anchor Stephanie Hockridge sentenced in massive COVID fraud scheme — will be jailed with Ghislaine Maxwell

Disgraced ex-TV anchor Stephanie Hockridge will spend the next ten years behind bars for her role in a multi-million-dollar COVID fraud scheme – serving her time in the same cushy lockup as notorious sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

The 42-year-old, a former Phoenix TV anchor turned entrepreneur, was sentenced in Texas federal court Friday and ordered to cough up nearly $64 million in restitution for the bogus Paycheck Protection Program loans she helped secure during the height of the pandemic, the Justice Department announced.

Hockridge, found guilty in June of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, will report to prison on Dec. 30.

She will be locked up at Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas — the same minimum-security facility that houses Jeffrey Epstein’s madam, disgraced Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, and “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” scammer Jen Shah, AZ Family reported.

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What Are the Burma Scam Centers, How Much Have They Stolen from Americans, How Do They Affect the Revolution, and What Is the US Doing About It?

The Myanmar military junta continues to run extensive criminal enterprises that finance its war and atrocities, with cyber scam compounds at the center of its revenue stream. These scam centers are massive penal-colony-style compounds where trafficked workers conduct global cyber fraud operations, primarily “pig butchering” schemes that build trust with victims before stealing their life savings.

Between 2020 and 2024, victims worldwide lost roughly $75 billion to Southeast Asian cyber scams, with hundreds of thousands of trafficked individuals from multiple nationalities forced to work in compounds across Cambodia, Burma (Myanmar), and Laos.

These networks rely on U.S.-based social media, websites, and hosting services to lure Americans into cryptocurrency schemes before redirecting the funds into fake platforms and laundering the money overseas. Authorities noted that in some countries the scam industry is so large it accounts for nearly half of the national GDP, with Americans losing an estimated ten billion dollars per year.

Since the coup in 2021, Burma has become the regional epicenter of cyber scams, with more than thirty scam enclaves along the Thai border and nearly one hundred along the Chinese border. These operations are driven largely by Chinese transnational criminal networks that use front companies such as Trans Asia and Troth Star to finance, expand, and manage the compounds. Some of these same companies partnered with junta-aligned Border Guard Forces on major scam hubs such as Huanya and KK Park, both of which have repeatedly targeted American victims.

Scam centers operate openly because the Myanmar military and its Border Guard Forces protect and profit from them, allowing the compounds to avoid the airstrikes routinely inflicted on civilian and resistance areas. Multiple investigations confirm the junta’s central role in this transnational criminal ecosystem.

Phone geolocation data from 2024 shows frequent movement between Myawaddy scam compounds and government buildings in Naypyidaw, indicating a direct operational relationship between organized crime and the military regime. Junta-aligned armed groups are permitted to impose informal taxation on the scam industry in exchange for land, security, transportation, and logistical support.

Several of the most active scam sites are in Karen State, including the Tai Chang compound near Myawaddy, which sits on territory controlled by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army. Another powerful Karen militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, plays a central role in sustaining the criminal economy. The DKBA provides security for multiple compounds and has been directly involved in abusing trafficked workers forced to run the scams.

Victims report beatings, electric shocks, being hung by their arms, and other violent treatment. Scam revenue funds DKBA activities, and the group collaborates with Chinese organized crime in drug trafficking, human trafficking, arms trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and money laundering.

The flow of scam revenue strengthens the junta’s allies and prolongs the war in Burma. The United Nations estimates that at least 120,000 people are trapped inside these compounds, facing forced labor, torture, and killings for failing to meet scamming quotas. Even as resistance organizations unite against the regime, the scam industry continues to thrive because it remains one of the junta’s most lucrative and protected sources of income.

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SNAP Fraud: A $50,000 EBT Card, One Person Getting Benefits from 6 Different States – This Is What Taxpayers Are Funding

If there’s any good that’s come from the government shutdown, it’s exposing all the fraud being committed to exploit the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

To be sure, there are millions of needy Americans who were hurting from being deprived of SNAP as they tried to support children and keep their families from going hungry. This is not about them. This is about the other people — the individuals who dip into this program unjustly at the expense of the taxpayer.

Just the News reported that Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Steven Vaden has indicated his agency is engaging in data collection relating to SNAP across several states to see where funds for the program are going.

So far, what he’s uncovered is not promising.

Vaden cited an instance of one individual getting SNAP in six separate states.

Another person had over $50,000 loaded onto their electronic benefits card.

EBT cards work like credit cards for anyone getting government assistance, with funds rolling over to the following month.

Clearly something is amiss.

As Vaden put it, “The taxpayers have a right to know what is being done with their money and that, when we have appropriations, we are spending more than nine billion a month.”

On the case of a $50,000 card, Vaden clarified, “[Taxpayers] especially have a right to rest assured that only those who truly need are benefitting from the program, because every dollar you give to someone who has a balance of more than $15,000 on their EBT card cannot go to someone who is truly in need.”

SNAP fraud gets worse when considering recent comments by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on “The Ingraham Angle.”

Over 500,000 people were found to have been taking SNAP benefits twice, with 5,000 dead people receiving it.

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The Primary-Residence Scam: Here’s Why James, Schiff, Cook, and Swalwell’s Mortgage Fraud Cannot Be Tolerated

The American mortgage system is one of the largest and most intricate financial infrastructures in the world.

It relies on a vast network of borrowers, lenders, underwriters, title companies, insurers, appraisers, and global investors who buy mortgage-backed securities. Every link in this chain depends on one thing: accurate, truthful information.

When borrowers falsify occupancy status, particularly by pretending a property is their primary residence, they distort risk, manipulate pricing, and inflict real financial harm on both lenders and honest borrowers.

This is why prosecutors have long treated primary-residence fraud as a serious federal offense, and I believe it’s why Director Bill Pulte and Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) regulators are referring violators to the Department of Justice.

A Straightforward Example: Maxine Waters Told the Truth

California Election Code §349 requires its elected officials to maintain a “domicile” and “fixed habitation” in California, and the U.S. Constitution requires they be an “inhabitant” of their home state.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters complies. While she owns a home in Los Angeles, her mortgage documents for her Washington D.C. residence correctly identify 2105 1/2 S Street NW as a second home, both in her 1991 purchase and in her 2007 refinance.

As an honest public official, Waters accepted slightly higher interest rates than if she had lied and claimed her Washington D.C. home was her “principal residence” (or primary home), a designation which receives the lowest rates available because they are considered lowest risk by lenders.

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Rollins: ‘Next Step’ Is to Make ‘Everyone Reapply’ for SNAP to Ensure Integrity

On Thursday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins discussed data on food stamps and said that data from blue states is “going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it.”

Rollins stated, “29 states, mostly the red states, responded with their data sets, February, March, April. … But here’s the most unbelievable news I have really, just over the last few days: That 5,000 dead people, that was just one month, the number is closer to 186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check. Now, that is what we’re really going to start clamping down on. Half a million are getting two. But here’s the really stunning thing: This is just data from those 29 mostly red states. Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data, what we’re going to find?”

She continued, “It’s going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it. And that’s the next step here.”

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Virginia Democrat Ibraheem Samirah Who Infamously DISRUPTED President Trump Sentenced in Explosive COVID Fraud Scheme

In a delicious twist of irony, Ibraheem Sabri Samirah, the Palestinian-American Democrat who infamously disrupted President Trump’s 2019 speech in Jamestown with a “Deport Hate” sign, has been nailed for wire fraud in a blatant PPP loan scam.

Samirah, 34, a dentist by trade, cooked up fake payroll records for his clinic, Nova Healthy Smiles PLLC, claiming four employees and $33,333 in monthly wages back in early 2020.

But as court documents reveal, those “employees” – including himself – weren’t paid a dime until after the loan came through in May 2020.

He even wrote checks to these phantom workers, only for them to funnel the money right back to him.

When it came time for loan forgiveness in August 2021, Samirah lied again, swearing the funds went to legitimate expenses like payroll and utilities.

In reality, the only “permissible” use was a pittance in employer taxes remitted to the IRS, the rest lined his pockets.

Samirah, who built his political career on railing against “systemic oppression” and championing Palestinian causes, apparently saw no issue with exploiting a Trump-era relief program designed to save jobs.

His actions echo the entitlement we’ve come to expect from far-left Democrats who preach equity while grabbing whatever they can.

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia laid it out plain in the July 2025 information: Samirah devised a scheme to defraud Sonabank (now Primis Bank) and the Small Business Administration, transmitting false wires across state lines to secure and forgive the loan.

He waived indictment and pleaded guilty in July, avoiding a trial that could have exposed even more dirt.

Come October 30, a judge sentenced him to three years’ probation and ordered $88,000 in restitution, a light slap considering the felony conviction strips him of voting rights and bars him from future office.

In 2019, President Trump was interrupted by Samirah, a member of Virginia’s House of Delegates, during a speech marking the 400th anniversary of the first meeting of the Virginia legislature in Jamestown in 1619–the first representative legislative assembly in the Western Hemisphere.

Democrat Ibraheem Samirah stood near the front of the stage facing the audience, holding several signs strung together and yelling, “Mr. President, you can’t send us back, Virginia is our home!”  Supporters of the President booed and chanted, “Trump! Trump! Trump!”

The messages on the signs read, “Go Back to Your Corrupted Home”, “Deport Hate” and “Reunite My Family And All Shattered by Systemic Discrimination”.

Ibraheem interrupted the president to scream about his deported Palestinian father.

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Swalwell Threatens Trump Officials After Federal Housing Director Pulte Criminally Refers Him to DOJ For Mortgage Fraud

Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell threatened investigators after NBC News reported that he had been criminally referred to the Justice Department.

Federal Housing regulator Bill Pulte referred Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution over mortgage fraud.

According to NBC News, Pulte is alleging that Swalwell, a Democrat Congressman representing a district in California, took out millions of dollars worth of mortgage loans based on his declaring his primary residence as Washington, DC.

Swalwell’s $1.2 million DC home is now a target of the Justice Department.

As TGP contributor Joel Gilbert recently reported, despite serving as a Congressman from California’s 15th District and claiming Hometown: Livermore on his official House profile, Swalwell has declared his Washington, DC property as his “principal residence.”

A public Deed of Trust for Swalwell’s DC home at 209 S Street NE, dated April 18, 2022, confirms the property is designated as his “principal residence” as a condition of the loan, Joel Gilbert reported.

Pulte is alleging that Swalwell made misleading statements during the purchase and refinance of the DC property.

The FHFA’s Inspector General is also investigating Swalwell’s mortgage fraud.

Swalwell, of Fang Fang fame, lashed out at Trump and threatened investigators during an appearance on MSNBC.

“When we are the majority, we will have subpoena power and accountability will happen. Bill Pulte and any other lawless official who is carrying out these political prosecutions on behalf of Donald Trump, they should familiarize themselves with the Judiciary Committee room because they’re going to be spending a lot of time there answering questions and I sure hope everything they did there was above board,” Swalwell said.

Article III Project founder and attorney Mike Davis said Swalwell’s statements threatening investigators sounds like obstruction of justice.

“Well, I would say this first off with Eric Swalwell, that sounds like obstruction of justice when you are threatening to go after federal investigators for investigating you for federal crimes so maybe that’s another charge that the Justice Department should tack onto this investigation,” Mike Davis said.

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5,000 Dead People Getting SNAP, 500,000 Receiving Benefits Twice: Rollins

The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a recent interview that the department found that 500,000 people are registered twice for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, while more than 5,000 deceased people have also been receiving the benefits.

In an interview on Nov. 12 with Fox News, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said that SNAP is one of the “most corrupt, dysfunctional programs” in U.S. history, adding that 80 percent of people using the program are able to work. After an investigation, the secretary said that 5,000 dead people were getting SNAP, while another 500,000 people were getting SNAP twice under the same name.

“They choose not to work” because taxpayers are footing the bill, she added, saying that “very big announcements” will be coming in the next week.

Her comment was made as SNAP benefits, known as food stamps, saw setbacks and legal wrangling during the government shutdown that was ended on Wednesday evening.

Rollins also suggested that if some SNAP benefits are cut off, more illegal immigrants will self-deport, which she said would change the outcome of the Census.

Earlier in the month, as SNAP benefits were suspended, Rollins described “massive fraud” in the system, noting that the fraud was discovered only in states that had cooperated with a prior investigation. She said that 21 states refused to hand over their SNAP data to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was established by the Trump administration earlier this year.

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