iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
A federal grand jury returned a seven-count indictment last week against an Indian-origin man from Sacramento, charging him with four counts of bank fraud and three counts of money laundering, Acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith announced.
The indictment was unsealed following the arrest of Akash Kumar Singh, 48, on February 20.
According to court documents, Singh fraudulently obtained more than $3 million in Paycheck Protection Program loan funds intended to help small businesses maintain payroll and operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Singh obtained at least two PPP loans for a Sacramento software development company he purported to lead called Kryptoblocks.
He falsely claimed that Kryptoblocks generated millions of dollars in revenue and paid millions of dollars in employee wages in 2019 and 2020.
In reality, Kryptoblocks generated little to no revenues and employed no individuals in the United States during this time.
This case is the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the IRS Criminal Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Stefanki is prosecuting the case.
If convicted, Singh faces a maximum statutory penalty of 30 years in prison and a fine of $1 million or of twice the amount of criminally derived property involved in each money laundering count, as per an official news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California.
Any sentence, however, would be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables. The charges are only allegations; the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
This effort is part of a California COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Strike Force operation, one of five interagency COVID-19 fraud strike force teams established by the U.S. Department of Justice. The California Strike Force combines law enforcement and prosecutorial resources in the Eastern and Central Districts of California and focuses on large-scale, multistate pandemic relief fraud perpetrated by criminal organizations and transnational actors. The strike forces use prosecutor-led and data analyst-driven teams to identify and bring to justice those who stole pandemic relief funds.
