In what reflects an ongoing effort to clamp down on pandemic relief fraud, Utah businessman Troy Campbell, 57, has been sentenced to serve 18 months in prison. Campbell orchestrated a scheme to illegally obtain over $400,000 from the COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The scheme, which spanned from July 2020 to February 2023, allowed Campbell to funnel $437,230 into his control thanks to fraudulent loan applications made by him, the owner of Salt IT Solutions LLC. Having Salt IT's payroll grossly exaggerated, the application claimed 22 employees were on the books when in reality, the company's actual number did not reflect that. In his role at Salt IT, Campbell used fake tax documents and fabricated payroll information to support his loan application, which was never filed with the IRS, according to details from his change of plea and sentencing hearings.
Following his prison term, the Taylorsville native will undergo two years of supervised release while also being required to pay the full amount of his ill-gotten gains in restitution to the victim. Drawing from the FBI Salt Lake City Field Office and the SBA Office of Inspector General's investigation, $75,000 of the PPP Loan proceeds was also revealed to have been wire transferred by Campbell to an accomplice involved in the operation. This information was brought forward by Assistant United States Attorneys Mark E. Woolf and Mark Y. Hirata, who prosecuted the case.
