The last of three Mount Vernon men who were convicted last year of stealing nearly $7.8 million in Covid-19 business disaster relief funds has been sentenced to prison.
U.S. District Court Judge Nelson S. Román sentenced Anwar Salahuddin, 39, to eight years and four months in federal prison, and his brother, Quadri, 29, to nine years and eight months in prison, on March 26. The sentences were publicly filed on April 7.
Anwar’s childhood friend and Mount Vernon native Jacob Carter, 38, of Capital Heights, Maryland, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Feb. 27.
All three were ordered to pay $7.7 million in restitution to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
They were convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft in a two week trial more than a year ago. Sentencings were delayed when they appealed the verdict. Judge Román rejected their arguments and they have appealed that ruling.
In 2020, the Mount Vernon friends orchestrated a scheme to steal Economic Injury Disaster Loans that were meant to support small businesses in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
They persuaded people to let them use their personal information on more than a thousand business loan applications and then to kick back a portion of the approved funds, according to court records. In five months, they applied for more than $10 million in loans and the SBA advanced about $7.9 million.
Prosecutors depicted the criminal conduct as “simple greed, not need.” Their sentencing memo to the judge quotes a message that Anwar Salahuddin sent to a friend:
“The government is corny. … They give MILLIONS of dollars to foreign countries for BS programs THEN wanna get mad at n—–s for scamming for loans. … I hope people scam every dollar they can and get away [with] it too.”
The SBA has identified more than $200 billion in potentially fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster Loans, according to the prosecutors’ sentencing memo, and the program eventually ran out of money while legitimate businesses were waiting for approvals.
