On January 9, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California, and the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Office of General Counsel (OGC) and Office of Inspector General (OIG) announced a settlement that resolves alleged violations of the False Claims Act (FCA) and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) related to improper inflation of employee head count numbers on the companies' Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan applications.1
The settlement involves four California companies and their owner (collectively, the Seasholtz Defendants) who have agreed to pay $600,000 in damages and penalties to settle allegations that they knowingly violated the FCA and the FIRREA when they improperly inflated the employee head count on the companies' PPP loan applications by impermissibly including non-employee contract workers who were, in fact, employed by other, unrelated entities.
The DOJ alleged the inclusion of non-employees allegedly caused the Seasholtz Defendants to receive approximately $1.8 million in excess PPP funds. Though the Seasholtz Defendants previously repaid the excess PPP loan funds to the lender, this settlement resolves a qui tam lawsuit brought by Bell Hill LLC on behalf of the United States to recover money that was fraudulently obtained from the government.2
Similarly, on February 1, 2023, the DOJ, the SBA's OGC and OIG, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the...
The Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) has issued a formal apology to Professor Wazi Apoh, Dean of the School of Arts and Professor of Archaeology at the University of Ghana, following the c...