A Florida woman has been given a prison sentence for defrauding a Massachusetts housing agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Alihea Jones, 51, from Brandon, Fla., was sentenced to 10 months behind bars, plus three years of supervised release. In addition to her prison sentence, Jones is required to make $222,074 in restitution and to forfeit the same amount.
As per the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts, Jones's crime involved authorizing unauthorized payments from the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) to personal accounts after being terminated from her position. She was found guilty of five counts of wire fraud following a guilty plea entered in September 2024. The DHCD's Residential Aid to Families in Transition (RAFT) program was intended to support low-income residents facing housing emergencies; instead, Jones directed funds to herself and associates after altering bank account details already present in the RAFT database. In her scheme, friends labeled in documents as "Friend A" and "Friend B" each kicked back $2,000 to Jones after receiving the illicit funds.
The fraudulent activities didn't stop at the housing agency. In 2021, Jones misled the SBA to grant her a $187,000 loan for her company, Beauty Concepts by Alihea, LLC, under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was set up to assist small businesses during the COVID pandemic. In her loan forgiveness application, Jones falsely claimed her business had 17 employees with a substantial monthly payroll, when, in fact, Beauty Concepts did not have any employees. Despite the falsehoods, the SBA forgave the loan, mistaking the fabricated details for reality.
Overall, the scam orchestrated by Jones resulted in a loss of $222,074, the breakdown of which includes $33,225 to the housing agency and $188,849 to the SBA for the PPP loan. The United States Attorney Leah B. Foley, Massachusetts Inspector General Jeffrey S. Shapiro, and Ketty Larco-Ward, the Inspector in Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s Boston Division, all announced the conclusion of this case. "Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Wichers of the Public Corruption Unit prosecuted the case," as a statement on the Justice Department's website reads. The authorities' coordination shed light on a serious breach of public trust and aimed to restore some semblance of integrity to the systems defrauded by Jones.
