Washington, D.C. resident Elias Eldabbagh has pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal over $31 million from the US government’s COVID-19 relief funds and laundering the proceeds. Eldabbagh successfully managed to steal $2,385,000 from the government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL).
During 2020-21, Eldabbagh fraudulently applied for at least 25 PPP loans of over $30 million in the name of his company Alias Systems, LLC. He also submitted at least four fraudulent EIDL applications, seeking over $950,000. To execute this scheme, Eldabbagh used a stolen identity and concealed the ownership of Alias Systems, LLC. He further stole identities, tax returns and financial records from a Washington, D.C. consulting company to support his applications, doctoring the stolen documents to look like the documents for his own company.
Eldabbagh laundered the illicitly-obtained proceeds by wiring them to 13 separate bank and brokerage accounts. He also used part of the proceeds to purchase a Tesla Model 3 and pay for personal expenses. He further converted over $288,000 of the proceeds from fiat currency to multiple cryptocurrencies. Eldabbagh will forfeit several of these assets to remit the funds he stole from the US government. He will receive his sentence in August 2022.
Source: US Department of Justice