Nikenson Jean Mathurin sat at a keyboard in Sparta, New Jersey, and built fifteen businesses that did not exist. A federal jury in Newark needed four days to see what he had actually built.
In the spring of 2020, a Montreal company wired $8.2 million to a purported escrow account for face masks Quebec and Alberta were desperate to receive. Six years later, an Orchard Park business owner has admitted the escrow account was the door the money walked through, not the lock that held it.
Terry Chen got six years for a $3.5 million pandemic unemployment fraud. The piece nobody talks about is the contractor who sat at a state laptop and turned the locks off from the inside.