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A Dallas-area woman pleaded guilty Thursday to fraudulently receiving over $40,000 from the federal government’s pandemic relief programs, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Monica Moreno, 40, faces up to 10 years in prison after pleading to one count of theft of government property.
Government prosecutors accused Moreno of lying about a previous crime when she sought and received a total of $44,757 from the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, the Paycheck Protection Program and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program.
In 2015, she was convicted of aggravated identity theft, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy to defraud the U.S., according to U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton. She was sentenced to 48 months in prison, according to court records.
Moreno also lied in her PPP application about owning an income tax service company that she claimed had an average monthly payroll of over $8,000, according to court records. Prosecutors said the Internal Revenue Service could find no payroll records or tax documents for the company.
She also claimed to be unemployed, even though she was working as a sales representative with a card processing service company at the time, according to court documents.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act into law. EIDL and PPP loans, programs made available by the CARES Act, were intended as a way to keep small businesses afloat during COVID-19 shutdowns. However, as the government rushed to get the programs out, fraud slipped through a few cracks. The Government Accountability Office estimates that 11% to 15% of unemployment insurance benefits paid during the pandemic were fraudulent.
Since the programs’ expirations, the government has begun aggressively pursuing fraud cases. In Texas alone, prosecutors have busted a former Power Ranger, pastors of a defunct church, a Plano dentist and many more.