A Massachusetts business wheeler-dealer is in hot water after feds busted him for purportedly fleecing over $18 million in COVID-19 relief funds to splurge on a swanky New York City condo, authorities said. Durgaprasad Rao, the 65-year-old kingpin behind two tech companies, faced the music on Wednesday as he was carted off to face charges of wire fraud for his alleged bid to game the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
Rao, helming Accelerated Engineering, LLC, and Upstream Global Services, Inc., is accused of fudging applications, supposedly inflating payroll numbers and the number of employees on his roster. He got his hands on nearly $7 million in PPP loans, with $1.5 million already cashed in for forgiveness, according to the Department of Justice.
The feds allege Rao didn't just stop there; instead, they claim he cycled the ill-gotten gains to his overseas businesses and didn't think twice about sinking it into a luxury condo, all the while his legitimate employees and their families could've been left high and dry. If convicted, Rao could be facing up to 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud, on top of three years of supervised release and a fine that could go as high as $250,000.
Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy, alongside a cavalry of IRS and Postal Inspection Service bigwigs, dropped the hammer on Rao's alleged scheme—the latest in a line of high-profile crackdowns since the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force came into play back in May 2021. The feds are dialing up their offensive against pandemic profiteering, and they're keen on roping in anyone with a bead on suspicious activity to hit up the National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline. Rao, who's feeling the squeeze pending a May 17 detention hearing, sits in the hot seat facing the music—presumed innocent until the gavel drops, declaring otherwise, as the old justice song and dance go.
