The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Democrats: The ‘Free Money’ Party

Posted on | September 14, 2021 | Comments Off on Democrats: The ‘Free Money’ Party

You probably recognize the woman on the right in that photo, but who is the woman on the left? That’s Damara Holness, 28, former president of the Broward County (Florida) Democratic Black Caucus. Holness’s father is Broward County commissioner Dale Holness, who is one of several Democrats running for the congressional seat vacated by the death in April of Rep. Alcee Hastings. Dale Holness’s campaign slogan is “Prosperity for All,” and look what his daughter’s doing:

Federal prosecutors have charged 28-year-old Fort Lauderdale, Florida resident Damara Holness with lying on a coronavirus relief loan application and fraudulently obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars intended to help small businesses financially survive the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the information filed [in August] in federal district court in Fort Lauderdale, in June 2020, Holness applied for a $300,000 forgivable, federally-guaranteed Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan on behalf of Holness Consulting, Inc., a Florida company that she owned. It is alleged that to justify the requested loan amount, Holness claimed in the on-line loan application, and through supporting fraudulent payroll tax forms, that her company employed 18 people and spent an average of $120,000 each month on payroll. In fact, Holness Consulting had zero employees and no payroll expenses. A bank in Georgia approved Holness Consulting’s PPP loan application based on the lies and wired $300,000 to the company’s bank account in Florida, says the information.
Once the money hit the bank account in July 2020, Holness spent the next few months creating a paper trail to make it appear as if Holness Consulting had employees and was spending the PPP money on legitimate, approved expenses, it is alleged. According to the information, Holness issued checks from the company bank account made out to others who agreed, for a fee, to help with the fraud. At Holness’ direction, the people receiving the checks would endorse and return them to Holness. Then, Holness would cash the checks at the company’s bank, give a few hundred dollars to the check endorsers, and keep the rest of the cash for herself – about $1,000 per check, says the information.

Of course, Damara Holness is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but her own father threw her under the bus, claiming he had been “estranged” from his daughter for years — despite the fact that she listed his real estate office as her business address.

The PPP program was targeted for billions of dollars in fraud. One estimate is that 15% of the loans, about $76 billion, were fraudulent. Hundreds of people have already been charged, but as Jenny Sugar, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, recently said, “I think that we are going to be investigating these cases for years to come. “But we’re likely just scratching the surface. I think there’s going to be a lot more fraud uncovered as before.”




 

Category: Crime, Democrats, Florida

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