GREENEVILLE, Tenn. — A Hawkins County woman previously convicted of wire fraud in 2019 will spend more time in prison after pleading guilty to using federal pandemic relief funds in 2021 to pay for a trip to a luxury Florida resort as well as cosmetic surgery.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Greeneville said Judge J. Ronnie Greer sentenced Leslie Bethea, 30, of Surgoinsville to six and a half years in federal prison for defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program loan program.
On June 14, 2022, a federal grand jury indicted Bethea for wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements. She agreed to plead guilty to the wire fraud and false statements charges.
According to court documents, Bethea was previously sentenced to two years in prison for wire fraud in Sept. 2019. She was released early on Oct. 8, 2020, and the feds said she was on supervised release when she applied for a nearly $21,000 PPP loan on March 29, 2021.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Bethea claimed in the loan application she made nearly $100,000 in 2019 as well as lied about not having any prior fraud convictions, saying she attached a fraudulent Schedule C form as proof of her claim.
After the loan was approved in April, feds said Bethea used nearly $3,000 of the relief money to pay for a five-day junket at Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles Beach near Miami. While there, feds said she used $5,000 of the loan to pay for an elective cosmetic surgical procedure.
Bethea returned to Tennessee and submitted a false report to her probation officer, claiming she had only received $200 during the month of April and that she had no expenses more than $500. She also claimed she never left Tennessee during the month of April.
"Elective cosmetic surgery and luxury vacations were not authorized expenditures for PPP loans," the plea agreement said.
As part of her sentence, she will be put on three years of supervised release after she gets out of prison. She has also been ordered to pay back $20,805 of the money she stole.
PPP loans were completely forgivable loans issued by the federal government starting in March 2020 through May 2021 and were meant to help businesses struggling during the early days of the pandemic so they could retain and pay employees. The loans became a target of widespread fraud and abuse, and NBC News reported at least 1,044 people have been convicted of defrauding the federal COVID relief program so far. It's estimated at least $80 billion of the more than $800 billion issued from PPP loans were obtained fraudulently, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.