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Amtrak Employee Charged in Louisiana with Cares Act Fraud and Theft of Government Funds

An Amtrak employee has been charged in a U.S. District Court in Louisiana with Cares Act fraud and theft of government funds after allegedly fraudulently obtaining pandemic-related relief loans and applying for unemployment while being fully employed.

Louisiana – U.S. Attorney Duane A. Evans announced that Stacey V. Santemore, Sr., age 46, formerly of New Orleans, Louisiana but now a resident of Houston, Texas, was charged on March 3, 2022, in a two-count bill of information with making false statements and theft of government funds related to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act).

The CARES Act is a federal law that went into effect on March 29, 2020, to provide emergency financial assistance in response to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. One source of relief provided by the CARES Act was the authorization of up to $349 billion in forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and certain other expenses, through the PPP. The PPP allows qualifying small businesses and other organizations to receive loans with a maturity of two years and an interest rate of 1 percent. Businesses must use PPP loan proceeds to cover payroll expenses, mortgage interest, rent, and utilities.

The PPP allows the interest and principal on the PPP loan to be forgiven if the business spends the loan proceeds on these expense items within a specified time after receiving the proceeds and spends at least a certain percentage of the PPP loan proceeds on payroll expenses. Congress authorized over $300 billion in additional PPP funding in April 2020.

In addition, the CARES Act created a temporary federal unemployment insurance program called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) after a major disaster declaration for this funding. PUA, administered by the Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC), provided unemployment insurance benefits for individuals who are not eligible for other types of unemployment benefits (e.g., the self-employed, independent contractors, or gig economy workers) (e.g., the self-employed, independent contractors, or gig economy workers).

According to the charging documents, Santemore, in July 2020, made false statements to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for the purpose of fraudulently obtaining pandemic-related relief loans funded by the federal government, including PPP funds, which he received in the amount of approximately $89,000.

Santemore also applied for Louisiana unemployment benefits through the LWC with PUA funding despite at all times being fully employed by Amtrak, the national passenger railcar company. From April 2020 to March 2021, he obtained more than $1,000, which amounts to theft of government funds.

Santemore faces a sentence of up to five years in prison, up to $250,000 in fines, and up to three years of supervised release for the false statements count. He faces up to ten years in prison, up to $250,000 in fines, and up to three years of supervised release for the theft count. There is also a mandatory special assessment fee of $100 that must be paid after conviction. U.S. Attorney Evans emphasized that a bill of information is only a charge and that the defendant’s guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.

For more information on the Department of Justice’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus. Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at 1-866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.

U.S. Attorney Evans praised the work of the Amtrak Office of Inspector General – Criminal Investigations and the Department of Labor – Office of the Inspector General, in investigating this matter. Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward J. Rivera is in charge of the prosecution.

An indictment or bill of information is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

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