Rather than face up to 25 years in prison, nine people from throughout New York pleaded guilty to defrauding the state and federal government, announced the office of Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz on Feb. 13.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The thieves pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the fourth degree and petit larceny on various dates from May 2025 to February 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThese nine defendants admitted to stealing thousands of dollars in state funds intended to support struggling businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d said Katz in a statement. \u201cThe funds were critical to helping New Yorkers survive an unprecedented crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of the plea deal, defendants Tufail Ahmed, 50, and Zakir Chowdhury, 59, both of Jamaica; Mahbub Malik, 41, of Astoria; Yousuf MD, 45, of Elmhurst; Mohammad Khan of Jamaica Hills; and Mohammed Chowdhury, also known as Khokan Ashraf, of Jackson Heights; along with Nadeem Sheikh, 56, Tanvir Milon, 55, and Juned Khan, 56, of Long Island, have agreed to making restitution payments totaling $1,091,720. Malik also received a three-year conditional discharge.<\/p>\n
The Chronicle previously reported that five of them filed multiple applications for the Covid-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan through the U.S. Small Business Administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said $760,00 has already been remitted to the state. \u00a0<\/p>\n
An investigation into the misuse of loan funds started by the state inspector general was referred to the DA\u2019s Office in May 2024, and revealed that around June 2020, each of the nine culprits submitted multiple applications to New York\u2019s Empire Development Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant Program on behalf of numerous small business corporations.<\/p>\n
They all certified that the money was needed to cover business expenses such as payroll, commercial rent or mortgage payments, utilities and supplies, but most of the loan money received was transferred, in several cases, immediately, into the personal bank accounts of the defendants. An extensive review of the bank records associated with the defendants\u2019 firms did not indicate any business activity prior to receiving the grant proceeds and did not reflect any revenue or expenses listed on the tax returns submitted with the original applications.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The defendants surrendered to the DA\u2019s Office from May 6 to May 9, 2025, when they learned about the charges against them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI thank my office\u2019s Frauds Bureau and the New York State Inspector General\u2019s Office for their partnership in holding them accountable,\u201d said Katz. The NYPD Squad assigned to the DA\u2019s Office provided crucial assistance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
State Inspector General Lucy Lang said exploiting disaster relief funds for personal gain is both criminal and shameful at any time, particularly during a global health crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNew York will not stand for putting greed above the public good,\u201d said Lang in a statement in which she also thanked law enforcement partners for securing both the guilty pleas and taxpayer money.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rather than face up to 25 years in prison, nine people from throughout New York pleaded guilty to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5514,57752,303,9,24,63,5193,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-135855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-covid-19","9":"tag-covid-19-economic-injury-disaster-loan","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-queens-district-attorney-melinda-katz","15":"tag-staten-island","16":"tag-staten-island-headlines","17":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}