Man charged after alleged $4M spending spree with virus relief funds

Credit: NYT

Credit: NYT

Hines’ lawyer, Chad Piotrowski, said in a statement his client was “a legitimate business owner who, like millions of Americans, suffered financially during the pandemic” and “is anxious to tell his side of the story when the time comes,” according to a report by The New York Times.

Hines was one of thousands of Americans who applied for millions of dollars through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which provides non-repayable loans to small businesses impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The funds were intended to help companies pay rent or mortgage costs, employee salaries and utilities, but investigators said Hines instead went on a spending spree — and purchased a $318,000 Lamborghini Huracan sports car on May 18 in North Miami Beach within days of the money hitting his bank account.

Hines registered the car “jointly in his name and the name of one of his companies,” and continued to squander large sums of money on “dating websites, luxury jewelry, clothing retailers, and Miami Beach resorts,” according to the criminal complaint.

“There does not appear to be any business purpose for most, if not all, of these expenses,” Bryan Masmela, a U.S. postal inspector, wrote in an affidavit outlining more than a dozen of Hines’ payments from May to June, according to The New York Times.

Authorities said Hines applied for more than $13.5 million from the program in April and lied on the paperwork about owning four companies. He also claimed to have 70 employees that required an enormous payroll of $4 million per month, according to reports. A postal inspector later determined that monthly expenses for Hines’ companies averaged about $200,000, far below what he claimed on his federal loan applications.

Under the fraudulant application, Hines eventually received three payments totaling $3.9 million and continued submitting requests for more funds, officials said.

An investigation revealed his “purported employees either did not exist or earned a fraction of what Hines claimed in his PPP applications,” the government affidavit reads. “Collectively, Hines falsely claimed his companies paid millions of dollars in payroll in the first quarter of 2020. State and bank records, however, show little to no payroll expense during this period.”

The investigation also found no record of Hines’ businesses — Unified Relocation Solutions LLC, Promaster Movers Inc., Cash In Holdings LLC and We-Pack Moving LLC, although two other businesses had a history of consumer complaints on the Better Business Bureau website for “bait-and-switch practices and other deceitful activities,” The New York Times reported.