Hopkinton Couple Sentenced for Fraud Schemes

BOSTON - A Hopkinton couple were sentenced in federal court in Boston for separate schemes to defraud their workers’ compensation insurance carriers, the Small Business Administration (SBA), and their mortgage lender.    

Ronaldo Solano, 52, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani to one year and one day in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release, with the first six months on home detention. Adriana Solano, 41, was sentenced on June 23, 2025 to time served (one day), to be followed by 27 months of supervised release, with the first three months on home detention. Ronaldo and Adriana Solano were also ordered to pay $1,625,872.03 jointly in restitution. Ronaldo Solano was ordered to pay an additional $627,675.88 in restitution.  In January 2025, Ronaldo Solano pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud, one count of mail fraud, and one count of wire fraud. Adriana Solano pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud. In March 2024, Ronaldo and Adriana Solano were indicted by a federal grand jury.

Between in or about 2012 and in or about 2020, Ronaldo Solano — who operated a roofing and construction company based in Framingham under the names H&R Roofing & Construction Inc. and H&R Roofing & Siding Corp. with his wife Adriana Solano — avoided more than $627,000 in workers’ compensation insurance premiums by underreporting payroll and paying workers through an uninsured third company.  

Separately, between in or about 2021 and in or about 2022, Ronaldo and Adriana Solano submitted a loan application on behalf of H&R Roofing & Siding Corp. to the SBA under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Program, which provided for pandemic relief under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. In the application, Ronaldo and Adriana Solano requested $2 million in relief funds for working capital and other eligible business expenses. After receiving the relief funds, Ronaldo and Adriana Solano transferred $1 million of the funds to a personal bank account they shared, from which they used more than $825,000 for a down payment towards a luxury home in Hopkinton. Ronaldo and Adriana Solano borrowed another $770,500 from a mortgage lender to fund the purchase of the Hopkinton home but did not disclose to their lender that they were claiming $1 million of the EIDL funds as an asset and using it for the down payment.  

United States Attorney Leah B. Foley; Ted E. Docks, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division; and Christopher Algieri, Special Agent in Charge of the Northeast Field Office of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General made the announcement today. Valuable assistance was provided by the Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristen A. Kearney of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit is prosecuting the case.

The CARES Act is a federal law enacted on March 29, 2020, designed to provide emergency financial assistance to the millions of Americans who are suffering the economic effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. One source of relief provided by the CARES Act was the EIDL Program, through which the SBA offers loans that can only be used on certain permissible business expenses, which can include payment of fixed business debts, payroll, accounts payable, and other business-related expenses that could have been paid had the COVID-19 disaster not occurred.  

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, among other methods, 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.  

Additionally, this case was investigated in connection with the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) Fraud Task Force, which was established to promote transparency and coordinate oversight of the federal government’s COVID-19 pandemic response.  The PRAC brings together federal agents from 20 agency Inspector Generals to detect fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in the more than $5 trillion in authorized COVID-19 funds. This case was also supported by the PRAC’s Pandemic Analytics Center of Excellence, which applies the latest advances in analytic and forensic technologies to help Inspector Generals and law enforcement pursue data-driven pandemic relief fraud investigations.

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 at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.