Wire
Eleventh Circuit leaves Georgia woman's PPP fraud convictions in place
The Eleventh Circuit upheld Shelitha Robertson's convictions, finding enough evidence that she and a co-conspirator used fake payroll claims to secure more than $14 million in pandemic loans.
In federal court in Georgia, Shelitha Robertson was convicted after prosecutors said a pandemic-relief fraud scheme turned fake payroll claims into more than $14 million in Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, money. Robertson and co-conspirator Chandra Norton told lenders their businesses employed hundreds of people, even though most of the companies were non-functioning and had no employees.
Banks that administered the program for the Small Business Administration eventually caught the scheme and froze the accounts, ending the run before the money could keep moving.
The workers who never were
PPP was built to help businesses keep people on payroll during the COVID-19 crisis. This case flipped that promise on its head. The applications claimed large staffs, but the real-world companies behind them were mostly shells, with no payroll to support the numbers that went into the loan forms.
That false picture mattered because payroll was the key that unlocked the aid. If the employee counts were real, the money could look justified. If they were made up, the loans were built on a lie from the start.
The testimony that tied it together
At Robertson’s trial, Norton said Robertson directed and encouraged the fraudulent applications. That testimony linked her directly to the filing of the false claims and turned the case from a paper fraud into a coordinated scheme.
Robertson was convicted of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. The judge sentenced her to 87 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release. Norton had already pleaded guilty and received 18 months in prison plus three years of supervised release.