A Fairhope man who admitted to defrauding a COVID-19 program out of more than $1.2 million will have to surrender two properties and cash, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
out of more than $1.2 million will have to surrender two properties and cash, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.sentenced him
to 2½ years in prison. On Tuesday, he issued a final forfeiture order allowing the FBI to take title to properties on Marine and Dauphin streets in Mobile that he bought with money he received from the Paycheck Protection Program. Pears also must surrender more than $2,000 from various bank accounts.It is one of the largest frauds in Alabama against the Paycheck Protection Program, which Congress created to help businesses pay idled workers during the pandemic.
Pears filed applications on behalf of two businesses – The Jason Made It Co. and Nanny For A Week. He claimed the first company had hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages and submitted a fabricated check purporting to be from the company’s checking account. The second company, Nanny For A Week, was a company once operated by the defendant’s disabled mother but had been shut down for many years before the pandemic. His plea agreement states that he submitted a fabricated tax form claiming wages of almost $4.4 million.
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