Former Suffolk County Corrections Officer Sentenced for COVID Unemployment and Loan Fraud

BOSTON – A former Suffolk County Sherriff’s Department corrections officer was sentenced in federal court in Boston for submitting fraudulent information in order to obtain loans through CARES Act programs like the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

Christnel Orisca, 26, of Boston, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Julia E. Kobick to one year of supervised release. Orisca was also ordered to pay $54,700 in restitution and forfeiture. In November 2025, Orisca pleaded guilty to five counts of wire fraud and one count of making a false statement to a financial institution, arising out of PUA, traditional Unemployment Insurance and PPP loan benefits obtained prior to his employment at the Suffolk County Sherriff’s Department. Orisca was arrested and charged in December 2024.

Orisca was a corrections officer with the Suffolk County Sherriff’s Department from late 2021 to December 2024. Orisca fraudulently applied for pandemic unemployment and small business loan benefits while working full-time, initially for a security company and later for a delivery company. While employed full-time, Orisca collected approximately $54,700 in unemployment benefits and small business loan funds.

In his PUA application, Orisca made fraudulent representations about his employment status and thereafter falsely claimed, on a weekly basis, that he did not work and did not receive any income during the prior week. In his PPP loan application, Orisca submitted false statements to SBA-approved lenders, including the income and/or payroll of his purported small businesses, in order to obtain his loan. He also made false representations on forms submitted to request that his PPP loans be forgiven.

United States Attorney Leah B. Foley; Anthony D’Esposito, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General; and Joseph V. Cuffari, Ph.D., Inspector General, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General made the announcement today. Valuable assistance was provided by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Boston Police Department and the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Chao, Chief of the Public Corruption & Special Prosecutions Unit, prosecuted the case.

On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud.  The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts.  For more information on the department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus and https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus/combatingfraud.

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 (NCDF) Hotline via the https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/webform/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.