Owner of District Real Estate Company Sentenced for Defrauding Paycheck Protection Program

            WASHINGTON – Patrick Strauss, 54, of Washington D.C., was sentenced today in U.S. District Court to 48 months of probation – including six months of home confinement to be followed by a period of intermittent incarceration, that is, 26 weekends in jail – and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $304,900 and fined $8,784, all for participating in a conspiracy that fraudulently obtained more than $304,000 in Paycheck Protection Program loans.

           The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., FBI Special Agent in Charge Sean Ryan of the Washington Field Office Criminal and Cyber Division, D.C. Inspector General Daniel Lucas, and Executive Special Agent in Charge Kareem A. Carter of the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Washington, D.C., Field Office. 

           Strauss pleaded guilty on September 12, 2024, to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. According to court documents, Strauss was owner of Powergrid Real Estate LLC. In 2020, he was approached by someone who asked him if he wanted to file an application for a PPP loan. Strauss was aware that Powergrid did not qualify for a PPP loan because it had no employees and no payroll.

           A co-conspirator prepared the PPP loan application for Powergrid, that falsely claimed that the company had 16 employees and an average monthly payroll of $132,547.17. The co-conspirator also prepared phony federal tax forms and payroll records to support the fraudulent PPP loan applications.

          In July 2020, Strauss submitted the PPP loan application to Capital Bank. On July 29, 2020, Capital Bank wired $304,900 into Powergrid’s bank account. In July 2021, a co-conspirator prepared false and fraudulent federal tax returns. Strauss submitted the faked papers to Capital Bank in support of loan forgiveness for Powergrid. 

           The CARES Act is a federal law enacted on March 29, 2020, designed to provide emergency financial assistance to the millions of Americans suffering the economic effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. One source of relief provided by the CARES Act was the authorization of up to $349 billion in forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and certain other expenses, through the PPP.  In April 2020, Congress authorized over $300 billion in additional PPP funding. 

           The PPP allowed qualifying small-businesses and other organizations to receive loans with a maturity of two years and an interest rate of 1 percent. PPP loan proceeds were required be used by businesses on payroll costs, interest on mortgages, rent, and utilities. The PPP allowed the interest and principal on the PPP loan to be forgiven if the business spent the loan proceeds on these expense items within a designated time after receiving the proceeds and used at least a certain percentage of the PPP loan proceeds on payroll expenses. 

           The case was investigated jointly by U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Washington, D.C., Field Office. In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Martin commended the work of those who investigated the case.

           This matter was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crabb, Jr. 

           Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.

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