WHITE PLAINS – Three women, including two from Westchester County, have been arrested and charged with defrauding the U.S. Small Business Administration of close to $1.7 million in COVID-19 loans and grants.
Alicia Ayers, 34, and Andrea Ayers, 54, of Mount Vernon, and Traci Proctor, 47, of Clarkston, Georgia, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; wire fraud, which carries a maximum of two years in prison; making false statements, which carries up to five years in prison; and aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory two-year consecutive sentence.
It is alleged that in June and July 2020, the three used the identities of approximately 300 other individuals to submit roughly 315 online applications to the SBA, seeking over $3 million of funds through the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program.
Andrea Ayers is an Ordinance Officer for the City of Mount Vernon and also serves as the President of the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) for the union local that represents a portion of the city’s workforce.
The three falsely represented to the SBA, among other things, that the applicants were the owners of businesses with 10 or more employees. The applications, though, falsely reported the businesses’ numbers of employees, and the vast majority of the purported businesses appear not to have existed at all.
Based on the fraudulent applications, the SBA made advance payments of approximately $1.69 million to the applicants, who often then kicked back a portion of the advance payments to the three women.
