ALBANY — CoreLife Eatery, a chain restaurant with locations in the Capital Region, will pay $7.8 million for falsely claiming that it was eligible for pandemic-relief funds.

The U.S. attorney's office announced Monday that the business admitted to giving false information to access the Restaurant Revitalization Fund grant, a federal relief program intended to support restaurants during the pandemic.

CoreLife Eatery operates 36 restaurants throughout New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky. The chain has locations in Colonie and Clifton Park.

As a part of the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021, $28.6 billion was allocated to restaurants that had suffered revenue losses due to the pandemic. Restaurants were eligible to receive some of that funding if they did not own more than 20 locations.

When CoreLife Eatery applied for the grant money in May 2021, they claimed they were eligible despite operating 29 branches at the time, prosecutors said.

The issue was first discovered when a whistleblower lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

“The Restaurant Revitalization Fund was created to support certain small businesses facing the economic hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic,” U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III said in a prepared statement. “By submitting false information about its size to obtain a grant, CoreLife not only diverted funds from eligible recipients but also eroded public trust in critical relief efforts."

May 6,...

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