Las Vegas businessman convicted of stealing $11M in PPP loans

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A jury convicted a man Wednesday for stealing $11 million of federal money meant to help struggling businesses during the COVID pandemic.

Meelad Dezfooli, 30, of Henderson, fraudulently received more than $11.2 million in PPP loans to buy homes and cars and to fund investments, prosecutors said. The Paycheck Protection Program was intended to help companies pay and retain employees during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.

The jury convicted Dezfooli on charges of bank fraud, money laundering and engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property.

During trial, prosecutors said Dezfooli lied on loan applications, claiming he had hundreds of employees for one application when, in fact, he had none. Dezfooli’s application for a PPP loan said his company, Best Floors, had an “average monthly payroll” of about $440,000 to cover 76 employees, investigators said in court documents. Investigators said Dezfooli had a quarterly payroll of less than $1,400 and one employee.

After he was charged in 2022, Dezfooli sold five of his homes he bought with PPP money, prosecutors said.

Dezfooli will be sentenced on Dec. 5 and faces a maximum penalty of decades in prison.

A sponsored article from a bank on a financial magazine’s website called Dezfooli “the dreamer” in 2019, saying he “built a thriving flooring business out of the ashes of the recession in the late 2000s.”

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