(Bloomberg) — A technology executive in the Seattle area was charged with fraudulently applying for more than $5.5 million in U.S. small-business loans and laundering some of the money into his personal Robinhood brokerage account.
Mukund Mohan allegedly applied for eight loans to six companies through the Paycheck Protection Program, a federal stimulus designed to encourage small businesses to keep workers employed during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mohan currently serves as chief technology officer at BuildDirect.com Technologies Inc., a website that connects people with home contractors, according to its website. Before that, he worked for Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., according to Mohan’s LinkedIn profile. Mohan and representatives for the companies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The federal loan documents contained a multitude of falsehoods, prosecutors said. In one application, Mohan said one of his companies paid more than $2.3 million for payroll in 2019 and that the company had dozens of employees, according to the indictment. In reality, Mohan acquired ownership of the company in May, and it had no employees, according to the U.S. Attorney in Washington.
Robinhood Markets Inc. provided records showing an account belonging to Mohan transferred about $231,000 of the federal money to the stock-trading app, prosecutors said.
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