Owner of popular Utah restaurant sentenced for stealing $1.8M in COVID relief money

SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — A Utah restauranteur and part-owner of the Sicilia Restaurant Management company has been sentenced to a year in prison after defrauding the U.S. government’s COVID-19 Relief program of over $1.8 million.

Giuseppe Mirenda, 29, of Salt Lake City, was sentenced after pleading guilty in Feb. to two counts of conversion of government property. In addition to his imprisonment, Mirenda was sentenced to three years’ supervised release and a fine of $250,000.

Mirenda, a co-owner of five Utah restaurants under Sicilia Restaurant Management — Sicilia Mia 1, Sicilia Mia 2, Sicilia Mia LLC, Antica Sicilia LLC, and Bella Sicilia LLC — reportedly fraudulently applied for and signed agreements on six Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL loans) between March 2020 and June 2020.

In 2021, Mirenda applied for another $520,000 in EIDL loans, but was denied, officials said.

What are EIDL loans? Under the CARES Act, they were meant for small businesses struggling from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mirenda reportedly agreed that the loan would only be used for restaurant capital, but instead used the money for his own personal benefit.

He also misrepresented the citizenship status of his co-owners to get the loans, according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

“In total, Mirenda unlawfully obtained $1,889,400 in EIDL loan funds,” a press release from the DOJ states. “In less than a year, he used over $1.1 million of the fraudulently obtained funds to buy a house in West Jordan, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada. Mirenda also misused at least another $81,781 in EIDL loan funds to buy luxury cars, including a BMW M3 and a Jaguar F-PACE, and $39,000 in cryptocurrency.”

Mirena reportedly paid back $680,000 of the EIDL funds, while the U.S. government recovered another almost $1.3 million from the seizure of the profits he made from the “forced sale of the two homes in Utah and Nevada,” the release states.

The Utah Federal COVID-19 Fraud Strike Force investigated this case.

No further information is available at this time.

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