Another South Florida law enforcement officer has been convicted of stealing thousands of dollars from a pandemic loan program and is now looking at time behind bars in a federal prison system that once employed him to guard inmates.
Eshwar Mohabeer, a former Bureau of Prisons correctional officer, faces a potential sentence of six months after pleading guilty Monday in Miami federal court to wire fraud stemming from his fabricated loan application to the Small Business Administration in 2020. The SBA granted him a $46,500 loan, but he didn’t use the money for any business expenses — authorities say he created one out of whole cloth to cash in on the public health emergency.
Mohabeer, 45, formerly employed at the Federal Correctional Institution-Miami, is among dozens of South Florida police officers and prison guards who have been charged with and convicted of fleecing U.S. government loan programs meant for struggling businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
READ MORE: Lambos. Jewels. How ‘easy money’ from Uncle Sam made Miami a feast for PPP fraudsters
In particular, authorities uncovered a troubling trend of Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies and guards who collectively bilked about a half-million dollars in pandemic relief loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration.
READ MORE: Ex-Broward SWAT deputy sentenced to four months in prison for pandemic loan fraud
According to a plea deal, Mohabeer said that in June 2020 he submitted a loan application to the SBA falsely claiming he owned a business that provided transportation and day tours, and that in the prior year his company collected revenue of $195,000.
Mohabeer, using his home address as his place of business, received the SBA loan under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which Congress allowed to be used for economic relief during the COVID-19 pandemic. The SBA would forgive the loan as long as it was used for business overhead such as rent.
Moved money into Schwab account
But after the SBA loan was deposited into his corporate bank account, Mohabeer transferred about half of the proceeds — $24,000 — into his Charles Schwab brokerage account, according to a factual statement filed with his plea agreement.
Authorities reviewed Mohabeer’s income tax records and found he had not filed a required form “for a transportation business because he did not have a transportation business.” Moreover, the only other revenue he reported was for rental properties, revealing that his total reported income “fell far short” of the $195,000 in revenue that he claimed on his fabricated SBA loan application, according to federal prosecutor Dan Bernstein.
A couple of months before his arrest in May, Justice Department-Office of Inspector General agents questioned Mohabeer, a Marine Corps veteran who worked as a federal correctional officer in the Miami area for about 15 years. He admitted that he submitted the SBA loan application and answered all the questions on the form.
“The defendant admitted that he did not have a transportation and day tours business,” the factual statement says. “Finally, the defendant admitted that he transferred a portion of the loan proceeds into his Schwab brokerage account.”
After he was indicted, Mohabeer paid back the SBA the full amount of the $46,500 loan, according to the plea agreement between the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the defendant’s lawyer, Andrew Feldman.
Mohabeer, who remains free on bond while awaiting his sentencing before U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz in January, is the latest law enforcement officer to be convicted of defrauding the government’s loan programs during the pandemic.
In late August, a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy who had served on the SWAT team was sentenced to four months in prison after a Miami federal jury found her guilty of bilking tens of thousands of dollars in government loans meant to help businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alexandra Acosta, a 10-year BSO veteran, was also ordered to pay a $4,000 fine by U.S. District Judge Robert Scola.
Acosta, 38, of Tamarac, was convicted of using a real estate company with help from a tax preparer to obtain a $20,180 loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program in 2021. Prosecutors said she falsified income, tax and other records to qualify for the loan guaranteed by the SBA, which ran the $900 million pandemic relief program approved by Congress as part of the CARES Act in 2000.
In June, the 12-person jury found Acosta guilty of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, committing wire fraud and making false statements to the SBA.
Acosta was the last of 17 BSO deputies — all arrested last fall on PPP and other loan fraud charges — to go to trial or cut a plea deal.
Acosta’s co-defendant, Vilsaint St. Louis, the tax preparer, pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy charge in May. He was given a one-year probationary sentence in addition to 100 hours of community service by Scola at the recommendation of his defense attorney and federal prosecutors.
The only other BSO employee convicted of PPP loan fraud to be sent to prison: Stephanie D. Smith. The former BSO deputy school resource officer was found guilty in March of wire fraud charges for submitting falsified loan applications for two companies through the pandemic program. She collected tens of thousands of dollars that she spent on herself.
READ MORE: First Broward deputy sent to prison for COVID loan fraud that put $31,000 in her pocket
In May, U.S. District Judge James Cohn gave the 28-year BSO veteran a sentence of seven months and ordered her to surrender to prison and repay $31,108 to the federal government. Cohn also imposed a $2,000 fine.
While Smith and Acosta faced trials in Miami, many of their BSO colleagues pleaded guilty to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the federally funded loan program. The total amount of lost loan money — about $500,000 — was relatively modest compared to dozens of other COVID-19 relief fraud cases in South Florida, but the sheer number of law enforcement officers charged with breaking the law in one police agency stood out as shocking, authorities said.
Ex-BSO lieutenant pleads guilty
Among them: Former BSO Lieutenant Ernest Bernard Gonder Jr. admitted in Miami federal court that he fleeced more than $167,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program — much more than the other BSO employees who were arrested in October on charges of stealing tens of thousands of dollars each from the same program.
Gonder, who resides in Port St. Lucie, submitted a PPP loan application in 2021 on behalf of EBG Properties LLC, in which he fabricated information about the company’s monthly payroll, number of employees and taxes, according to charges filed by prosecutor Marc Anton.
Gonder, who formerly worked in the BSO Department of Detention for more than 20 years, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in March. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams gave Gonder a sentence of one-year house arrest along with five years of probation. He was also ordered to pay back the government.
READ MORE: Ex-BSO lieutenant pleads guilty to fleecing hundreds of thousands from COVID loan program
A year ago, a former Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation sergeant was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for submitting hundreds of thousands of dollars in false loan applications for COVID-19 relief funds.
Arashio Harris, 49, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud , was ordered to pay back more than $432,000 to the U.S. government after admitting that he applied for two Paycheck Protection Program loans as well as two Economic Injury Disaster Loans to “unlawfully enrich himself,” according to court records.
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