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The Justice Department announced today the results of a coordinated, nationwide enforcement action to combat COVID-19 fraud, which included 718 enforcement actions – including federal criminal charges against 371 defendants – for offenses related to over $836 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud.

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that KONRAD BICHER pled guilty today to wire fraud in connection with his fraudulent operation of real estate companies, including by entering lease agreements for residential apartment units in Manhattan on false and fraudulent pretenses and by making false statements to obtain loans guaranteed by the United States government.

The Department of Justice today announced criminal charges against 18 defendants in nine federal districts across the United States for their alleged participation in various fraud schemes involving health care services that exploited the COVID-19 pandemic and allegedly resulted in over $490 million in COVID-19 related false billings to federal programs and theft from federally funded pandemic programs.

Christopher A. Parris, 42, formerly of Rochester, New York, and currently of Lawrenceville, Georgia, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud related to a Ponzi scheme, as well as to wire fraud involving the fraudulent sale of purported N95 masks during the pandemic, was sentenced to serve 244 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci Jr.

An Oklahoma woman pleaded guilty today in the Western District of New York for a scheme to defraud the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) of over $43.8 million in COVID-19 relief loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.