A 59-year-old man from Paulden, Arizona was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison over fraud schemes connected to a Frisco-area car dealership that lost more than $7 million and was ultimately forced to close. Mark Exposito was also ordered to pay $10,627,675 in restitution to his victims and to forfeit real property and jewelry, according to court records.
Exposito pleaded guilty to fraud charges that were originally filed separately in the Eastern and Northern Districts of Texas before being consolidated for sentencing, according to a U.S. Department of Justice release. Prosecutors say Exposito conspired with others to commit wire fraud involving the dealership in the Frisco area, and separately conspired to fraudulently obtain more than $2.7 million in Paycheck Protection Program loan proceeds, as reported by Arizona's Family.
The dealership fraud alone is said to have cost the business more than $7 million, losses severe enough that the dealership was forced to close, per the same report. Exposito's sentence amounts to 120 months in prison, as announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Texas.
A Paper Trail Stretching Back to 2023
Court dockets reviewed through CourtListener show Exposito was indicted in March 2023 alongside co-defendant William Lavin on count 1 and counts 2 through 23. At his initial appearance and arraignment later that month, Exposito pleaded not guilty to all of those counts, the docket entry shows.
A separate Eastern District of Texas case, numbered 4:25-cr-00190, shows Exposito entering a guilty plea to count 1 in October 2025, according to a different CourtListener docket. That same docket recorded Exposito's sentencing as reset for this past Tuesday, November 10, before Chief District Judge Amos L. Mazzant in Sherman.
FBI and SBA Watchdog Both Investigated
The FBI investigated the case, as did the Small Business Administration's Office of Inspector General, according to Arizona's Family's reporting on the Justice Department's announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Johnson prosecuted the case on behalf of the government, the outlet reported.
Paulden, where Exposito is from, sits north of the Prescott Valley area in Arizona. The exact timing of when the underlying fraud occurred was not specified in the available case materials.
Part of a Broader PPP Fraud Pattern
Exposito's case fits into a much larger pattern of pandemic-era lending abuse. The Small Business Administration's Office of Inspector General found that its analysis of PPP loan data as of August 2020 had already identified more than 70,000 potentially fraudulent loans totaling more than $4.6 billion, according to a report filed with oversight.gov.
Texas has seen other large PPP fraud prosecutions in recent years. Six Texas residents were sentenced for conspiring to fraudulently obtain more than $20 million in PPP loans, with some receiving sentences of 44, 18 and 18 months, according to MyTexasDaily. In that case, the defendants' loan applications included falsified employee and payroll figures along with fraudulent bank records and fake federal tax forms, and a portion of the proceeds were laundered through checks written to fictitious employees, the outlet reported.
