An attorney who operated a Georgia-based real estate law firm pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining nearly $300,000 in Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) during the Covid-19 pandemic and to using his attorney escrow account to launder more than $250,000 from unrelated investor fraud schemes.
According to the charges brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, Sanjay Patel submitted four fraudulent EIDL loan applications to the Small Business Administration (SBA) between August 2020 and March 2021. Patel sought at least $421,000 to purportedly operate his business, including his law practice, Worden & Associates, but in his applications he misrepresented the number of employees his law firm employed, its gross revenues, and in at least one application, the existence of his business. In reliance on Patel’s fraudulent misrepresentations, the SBA funded two of his loans totaling approximately $300,000. After receiving the loan proceeds, Patel misused the funds for unauthorized purposes including trips to casinos, personal expenses, and payments toward non-business loans.
Separately, Patel used his Interest on Lawyer Trust Account (IOLTA) to launder the proceeds from various investment frauds. In one case from May 2020, Patel received $350,000 from an investor who believed the funds were going to be used for an energy project, but he wired $250,000 from those funds to an unrelated entity. In June 2020, Patel received another $350,000 as part of a different energy investment but laundered over $132,000 by conducting a series of wire transfers to other accounts unrelated to the investment.
Patel is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 12.
“This office will remain steadfast in coordinating with our federal law enforcement partners to identify and hold accountable those who defrauded the government’s Covid relief programs,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. “It is especially aggravating that Patel, an attorney, not only used his professional standing to commit money laundering, but he also defrauded the American taxpayer out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
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