Steven Hendren pleaded guilty in St. Louis federal court to wire fraud after pulling $284,840.44 out of a Missouri pandemic housing program by inventing tenants, leases, and rent rolls. The money was supposed to keep people in their homes. Some of it went to a 2020 GMC Yukon.
Christopher Staggs ran his pandemic unemployment scheme out of a Chicago LLC and kept a ledger of the people whose identities fueled it. On June 9, 2026, a federal judge gave him two years.
Absalom Hall walked into a federal relief program designed for businesses that did not exist and walked out with $85,401. On May 15, a judge sent him to prison for three years. The door he used is still open for thousands of others.
Mehrdad Tabrizi pleaded guilty Monday to draining more than a million dollars from federal pandemic relief programs using a non-emergency ambulance company he had already shuttered. The Porsche was the tell.
Jarrell Curne told a bank his entertainment company had a hundred employees and a $1.5 million payroll. It had neither. The wire cleared in forty-eight hours, and the federal government just sentenced him for what came after.