Two Maryland men, including a cop on the beat, have copped to scamming the feds out of nearly $100,000 in COVID relief funds, authorities said. Owen M. Grigsby and Himmeh Kuawogai cooked up a scheme to fraudulently snag Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDLs) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, a charge that could see them behind bars for up to five years.

The duo's downfall was announced by U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves and FBI's top agent in Washington, David J. Scott, along with Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela A. Smith. Grigsby, a 44-year-old officer with the MPD and current desk jockey on administrative leave, teamed up with Kuawogai, a 46-year-old accountant, to establish a sham business that existed solely to pocket emergency loans, according to court records.

Their antics include Grigsby failing to report his extracurricular business activities as mandated by MPD policies and submitting multiple fraudulent loan applications. He even dared to apply for loan forgiveness, all while never planning to put the dough towards a real business. It seems his financier friend Kuawogai was all too eager to provide fabricated documents and guidance on how to navigate the loan process via various channels of communication.

Judge Randolph D. Moss, who presided over the case, has set July 9, 2024, as the date to determine just how long the pair will spend in federal time-out. Grigsby, in particular, managed to pocket $53,600 from an EIDL application loaded with lies and walked away with another $41,666 thanks to a double-dipping PPP loan fraud. All this was unearthed during a diligent sweep by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the MPD, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. The case, slated for prosecution by U.S. Attorney Rebecca G. Ross, serves as a sobering reminder of the greed that can poison times of collective challenge.