Another Issaquah man has been charged by the Department of Justice for fraudulently receiving COVID-19 relief funds, this time through seeking over $1.1 million in relief from the Small Business Association (SBA) under the CARES Act.

A 46-year-old resident was charged with one count of wire fraud, after allegedly submitting nine disaster loan applications on behalf of five different companies, using fake federal tax filings and numerous false and misleading statements about the businesses and their operations.

The Issaquah man is owner and CEO of Back 2 Health Bellevue, also known as Blackrock Services PS, for which he filed Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loans and Economic Injury Disaster loans (EIDL). He fraudulently filed for additional PPP funds for Back 2 Health Bellevue through the names of current and former employees. He also filed for other companies, including a company he incorporated in June 2020 to apply for an EIDL loan, fraudulently stating it was in place since 2017 with nine employees and $1.5 million in receipts.

The CARES Act is a federal law enacted on March 29, designed to provide emergency financial assistance to the millions of Americans who are suffering the economic effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. One source of relief provided by the CARES Act was the authorization of up to $349 billion in forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and certain other expenses, through the PPP. In April 2020, Congress authorized over $300 billion in additional PPP funding.

The PPP allows qualifying small-businesses and other organizations to receive loans with a maturity of two years and an interest rate of 1 percent. The EIDL loans

In May, a software engineer in Issaquah was also charged for fraudulently seeking over $1 million in COVID-19 relief grants through the CARES Act, as previously reported by Issaquah Reporter.