Florida man buys Lamborghini from coronavirus relief fund

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Florida man buys Lamborghini from coronavirus relief fund
Florida man buys Lamborghini from coronavirus relief fund

Florida : A Florida man who received around 4 million US Dollars in federal loans intended to help struggling businesses, spent the money in buying a new Lamborghini Huracán sports car and other luxury items. The accused man has been arrested, said police officials.

David T. Hines, 29, of Miami, was charged with bank fraud, making a false statement to a lending institution and engaging in transactions in unlawful proceeds, according to prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

If found guilty he may get a 70 years of jail term for the alleged fraud; in April, he joined scores of other business owners who demanded financial aid via the federal Paycheck Protection Program, a loan program created to help businesses keep their employees during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to his application he was running four businesses with 70 staffers and required $4 million as monthly expense to survive.

By the next month, Mr. Hines started receiving money from the loan program. He received three payments totaling $3,984,557, according to the authorities. As that money came in, Mr. Hines continued submitting requests for more funds. Eventually, his requests totaled $13,542,741, officials said.

Now, based on his financial records, it has been noticed that he was making purchase of luxury jewelry, expensive clothes, visits to resorts in Miami Beach and was spending money on dating websites, officials said.

“There does not appear to be any business purpose for most, if not all, of these expenses,” Bryan Masmela, a U.S. postal inspector, wrote in an affidavit outlining more than a dozen of Mr. Hines’s payments from May to June.

Mr. Hines’s lawyer, Chad Piotrowski, said in a statement that his client was “a legitimate business owner who, like millions of Americans, suffered financially during the pandemic” and “is anxious to tell his side of the story when the time comes.”

Also, the investigators have found that the monthly expenses for Mr. Hines’s companies averaged around $200,000, far below what he claimed on his federal loan applications, the postal inspector said.