A Florida man has been arrested and charged with fraud after he received nearly $4million in federal loans for small businesses owners and bought a brand new Lamborghini.
David T. Hines,29 is a small business owner being accused of receiving funds from the Paycheck Protection Program and using the money to buy a luxury 2020 Lamborghini Huracan, go to lavish resorts and luxury stores.
Hines registered his car in his name and his company name and according to the government’s criminal complaint, Hines is officially listed as “either manager or president” of four different moving companies located in South Florida, all of which applied for relief money through the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program.
Prior to Hines applying for the federal loans records showed one of his bank accounts at .30 and another negative.
Hines requested nearly $13.5 million in PPP loans for those four businesses in April, while allegedly falsely claiming that those companies had paid $4 million in total per month to more than 70 employees in the first quarter of 2020, prosecutors wrote in the complaint.
However, the government says that “those purported employees either did not exist or earned a fraction of what Hines claimed in his PPP applications” and that bank records “show little to no payroll expense during this period” for Hines’ companies.
If convicted Hines could face up to 70 years in prison.
