Jorge Abramovs, business owner from Las Vegas, will not go down being known as the best boss. He will however be known as a top-level fraudster. One November 25, 2022, Abramovs pleaded guilty to stealing $350,000 from his employee’s payroll tax deductions. He also pleaded guilty to stealing almost $2 million from the pandemic relief Paycheck Protection Program. They say, never waste a good opportunity to learn from a bad boss. Abramovs is one to learn from.
From 2014 through 2019, Abramovs was responsible for collecting and paying employee-related taxes to the IRS, including withheld employee federal income taxes, employee and employer FICA contributions, and federal unemployment taxes. But Abramovs did not pay these withheld funds over to the IRS. Similarly, he failed to pay employer FICA contributions and unemployment tax payments the entities owed the IRS for those employees. He also failed to use the PPP loans to do right.
On each PPP loan application, a borrower certifies that they will not receive another PPP loan. Which is what Abramovs did on all twelve of his applications using several company names-National Investment Group Corporation, National Legal Advisors In Care Of, and National Investment Group. Not only did Abramovs lie about the numbers of loans he was obtaining, but he also clearly forgot to mention he likes to steal payroll taxes from his employees and the U.S. government. In total, he received 11 PPP loans.
Abramovs indicated, in his PPP loan applications, that the money would be used toward rent and payroll, but once again Abramovs does wrong by his employees. Shortly after receiving the fraudulent funds, he purchased a 2020 Bentley Continental GT Convertible and a 2020 Tesla Model 3. At the same time, he purchased two luxury condos at the Veer Towers in Las Vegas.
Shout out to the FBI and the IRS-Criminal Investigation unit for teaming up on this really bad boss.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on an article “5 years prison, $2.5M restitution for Las Vegas COVID fraud” published by AP News on November 25, 2022
A Las Vegas man has been sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay more than $2.5 million in restitution for bilking the government out of millions of dollars in federal loans and COVID-relief funds during the pandemic two years ago.
Federal prosecutors say Jorge Abramovs, 40, participated in a scheme to defraud multiple financial institutions out of more than $1.9 million in loans and collecting more than $350,000 from employees as income then never paid the taxes due.
