BOSTON – A Leicester man was convicted in federal court in Worcester yesterday of his involvement in fraudulent schemes affecting the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and loan programs in Massachusetts and Nevada.

William Cordor, 27, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Timothy S. Hillman to 33 months in prison and three years on probation. Cordor was also ordered to pay $8,000 in restitution to the SBA. In November 2021, Condor pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, four counts of wire fraud, and four counts of aggravated impersonation.

Between May and October 2020, Cordor engaged in a fraudulent unemployment scheme by attempting to file numerous unemployment claims with the State of Nevada taking advantage of PUA funds made available due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cordor filed the claims using the names, social security numbers and other personally identifying information of third parties for which it had no legal authority to file such claims. The State of Nevada eventually detected that the applications were fraudulent and did not approve the PUA funds.

Cordor also engaged in a second wire fraud scheme using stolen identities to fraudulently apply for COVID-19-related economic disaster loans made available by the SBA. Cordor used the personally identifying information of a third party to obtain an SBA loan under false pretences, then used the fraudulent funds for his own enrichment, including to pay for plane tickets, hotel rooms , restaurants, entertainment and shopping while on vacation in Florida.

In May 2020, Cordor agreed to turn over to federal authorities the $79,000 balance in his bank account that came from a separate unemployment fraud scheme in Massachusetts. This happened before Cordor filed the fraudulent unemployment claims with Nevada in July 2020.

United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins; Jonathan Mellone, Special Agent in Charge of the Department of Labor, Office of the Inspector General, Office of Investigations; and Andrew Murphy, Special Agent in Charge, US Secret Service, Boston Field Office, made the announcement today. Valuable assistance in this case was provided by Leicester and Marlboro Police Services. Assistant U.S. Attorneys John T. Mulcahy of Rollins’ Criminal Division and Danial Bennett of Worcester Branch prosecuted the case.

On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to mobilize Department of Justice resources in partnership with government agencies to scale up enforcement and prevention efforts. pandemic-related fraud. The task force strengthens efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies administering relief programs to prevent fraud, among other methods, by increasing and integrating coordination mechanisms existing ones, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their agendas, and sharing and leveraging information and knowledge gained from previous enforcement efforts. For more information about the Department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.

Anyone with information about alleged attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) hotline at 866-720-5721 or via NCDF’s online complaint form at: https://www. .justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.