An Akron man has been handed a 15-month federal prison sentence for his involvement in a romance fraud scheme, with an additional year of supervised release. In a news release by the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado, William Chadwick, 63, has been required to pay back a substantial sum in restitution, namely $228,284.09, after entering a guilty plea to a count of money laundering.
Chadwick's operation ran from May 2020 up through August 2022, and involved laundering funds from various federal COVID-19 relief programs. These included Unemployment Insurance benefits and payments from both the Emergency Rental Assistance and Paycheck Protection (PPP) programs. The transactions in question, as per his plea agreement, ranged from ATM withdrawals to dealing in cryptocurrency, totalling around $228,284.09, the amount he's now obliged to reimburse.
"Laundering money which was stolen from the federal government is a crime against every hard-working, tax-paying citizen of the United States," stated U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly. Quentin Heiden, the Special Agent-in-Charge for the Western Region of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General, commented on the significance of the sentencing, asserting, "This sentence highlights our commitment to relentlessly investigate fraud in DOL’s unemployment insurance program." Heiden emphasized the dedication to prosecute those exploiting pandemic relief efforts, as per the U.S. Department of Justice.
The investigation that led to Chadwick's conviction was carried out by the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, and the Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General. Assistant United States Attorney Nicole Cassidy was in charge of the prosecution proceedings. The courtroom proceedings were overseen by United States District Judge William J. Martinez. All of this comes in the wake of measures like the CARES Act, established in response to the COVID-19 pandemic's economic toll on American citizens.
