Illinois Tax Preparer Sentenced to 10 Years for Filing More Than 1,500 Fraudulent PPP Loan Applications Worth $14 Million
On March 18, 2026, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois announced the sentence of Sharhabeel Shreiteh, a tax preparer in Palos Hills, Cook County, Illinois, for a massive Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan fraud: on March 10, U.S. District Judge Martha M. Pacold sentenced him to ten years in federal prison and ordered him to forfeit $741,000 and to pay $14 million in restitution to the United States government.
According to the Justice Department, in 2020 and 2021 Shreiteh recruited purported sole proprietors, self-employed individuals, and businesses to provide their personal identifying information and other documents, and then submitted more than 1,500 fraudulent PPP loan applications on their behalf. The applications contained numerous misrepresentations inflating the applicants' operations, payroll, and income, causing the government to disburse at least $14 million in fraudulent loans. For each successful loan he received kickbacks of $1,000 to $4,000, totaling at least $741,000. He funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in proceeds to financial institutions in the Palestinian Territories, much of it used to build a second home there, and used other proceeds on renovations to his residence in Crete, Illinois, and vacations to South Carolina and Florida.
Shreiteh had pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge. At sentencing, the court also found that in 2020 and 2021, while receiving PPP fraud proceeds and working as a tax preparer, he collected unemployment benefits from both Illinois and Ohio. Judge Pacold said at the hearing that fraud against any government program is a terrible and very serious offense, particularly against an emergency relief program funded by taxpayers. The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros, Adam Jobes, Special Agent-in-Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation in Chicago, and Douglas S. DePodesta, Special Agent-in-Charge of the FBI Chicago Field Office.
Source: U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于美国华盛顿的美国司法部总部罗伯特·肯尼迪大楼夏日全貌（资料照片）。Ajay Suresh 摄，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons；联邦固定图库。 / Photo: The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in Washington, D.C., in summer (file photo). Photo by Ajay Suresh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; federal fixed image library.
