Los Angeles Woman Sentenced to Five Years for COVID Loan Fraud: Ordered to Pay More Than $2.37 Million in Restitution
On February 28, 2025, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California announced that Casie Hynes, a woman from the Mid-City area of Los Angeles, a city in Los Angeles County, California, was sentenced for COVID-19 loan fraud and for falsely seeking pandemic tax credits. Hynes, 39, was sentenced late on Thursday afternoon, February 27, to 60 months in federal prison.
United States District Judge Hernán D. Vera imposed the sentence and also ordered Hynes to pay $2,376,168 in restitution. In April 2024, Hynes pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of false claims.
According to the Justice Department, from June 2020 to December 2021, Hynes submitted more than 80 fraudulent applications for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) from banks and the United States Small Business Administration (SBA) in the names of approximately 20 companies. Congress designed these programs to provide government relief to businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The applications were submitted in the names of both existing and newly created companies, including Nasty Womxn Project and She Suite Collective and others purportedly owned by Hynes or her friends and family members.
On those applications, Hynes often used the personal information and signatures of other people without their authorization and even though those people were not involved with the companies. She also provided false information, including as to the number of purported employees at the companies, the companies' average monthly payroll, and who purportedly owned and controlled these sham businesses, and she submitted fabricated tax documents and bank statements in support of the fraudulent PPP and EIDL applications.
In reliance on the fraudulent applications, banks and the SBA approved PPP and EIDL loans for the various companies she created and then disbursed the COVID-19 relief funds into bank accounts she controlled and used to pay for her own personal expenses. Hynes admitted that she intended to cause approximately $3,174,323 in losses and that she received approximately $2,255,244 in fraudulent proceeds from this scheme.
"The defendant exploited a crisis to line her own pockets, diverting vital relief funds from businesses that needed the money," said Acting United States Attorney Joseph McNally. "The sentence imposed today sends a message to others that you will be held accountable if you steal government relief funds."
In a related scheme, Hynes used some of the same companies named in her PPP and EIDL fraud to submit bogus tax forms to the IRS requesting refunds. Following COVID-19's outbreak, Congress enacted laws authorizing the IRS to reduce the employment tax burdens of small businesses and reimburse those businesses for wages paid to employees who were on sick or family leave and could not work because of the pandemic. During the tax years 2020 and 2021, the IRS offered the Employee Retention Credit and paid sick and family leave credit to businesses that were significantly impacted by COVID-19.
From May 2021 to April 2022, Hynes caused to be submitted 12 tax forms that sought refunds based on false statements on behalf of Nasty Womxn Project LLC, She Suite Ventures, and Casie Hynes Consulting. Hynes knew these companies had little to no business operations, did not have the number of employees she claimed, and did not pay the quarterly wages she claimed in the tax forms. Through these false claims, Hynes fraudulently sought approximately $1,255,703 in COVID-19 tax credits and tax refunds, none of which the IRS paid.
IRS Criminal Investigation investigated this matter, and Assistant United States Attorney Kristen A. Williams of the Major Frauds Section prosecuted the case. The Justice Department also noted that on May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Justice Department in partnership with agencies across the federal government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud.
(Source: U.S. Department of Justice)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于洛杉矶市中心的春街法院大楼（原美国联邦法院大楼，左侧为洛杉矶市政厅），本案由美国司法部加州中区联邦检察官办公室起诉（照片：Los Angeles，CC BY-SA 3.0，Wikimedia Commons）。 / Photo: The Spring Street Courthouse (the former U.S. Courthouse) in downtown Los Angeles, with Los Angeles City Hall at left; the case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California (photo: Los Angeles, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons).
