Baltimore City Wire

Baltimore, Maryland – Senior United States District Judge James K. Bredar sentenced Ayaz Qureshi, age 55, of Severna Park, Maryland to a year and a day in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release, in connection with a conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting financial institutions, relating to more than $250,000 in fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) benefits. PPP benefits were a program created by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which was a federal law enacted in March 2020 to provide emergency financial assistance to Americans suffering from the economic effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The sentence was announced by Erek L. Barron, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland; Special Agent in Charge William J. DelBagno of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Field Office (FBI); Special Agent in Charge Amaleka McCall-Brathwaite of the Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General (SBA-OIG), Eastern Region; and Chief Robert McCullough of the Baltimore County Police Department (BCPD).

Financial assistance through PPP benefits included forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and certain other expenses, administered through the Small Business Administration (SBA) and SBA-approved lenders. According to the guilty plea, in March 2021, Qureshi and co-conspirator Ahmed ("Adam") Sary submitted a fraudulent PPP loan application to Cross River Bank to obtain a PPP loan for Yazee, Inc., a company Qureshi owned. The PPP loan application contained numerous material misrepresentations, including that Yazee in 2019 had 16 employees and an average monthly payroll of more than $100,000. In support of the loan application, a fabricated 2019 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) form was submitted, which falsely stated that Yazee’s total payments to employees in 2019 were more than $1,200,000.

Based on the false representations and fraudulent submissions made on behalf of Qureshi as the owner of Yazee, the PPP loan was funded on March 22, 2021 and approximately $250,000 was distributed to a bank account controlled by Qureshi. He agreed to pay Sary kickbacks totaling $75,000 for his work in submitting the false application and obtaining the fraudulent PPP loan. After receipt of the PPP loan, Qureshi established payroll services for Yazee to facilitate documentation that would later be used to substantiate a request for the PPP loan to be forgiven.

The District of Maryland Strike Force is one of five strike forces established throughout the United States by the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute COVID-19 fraud. The CARES Act was designed to provide emergency financial assistance to Americans suffering from economic effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The strike forces focus on large-scale multi-state pandemic relief fraud perpetrated by criminal organizations and transnational actors. These interagency law enforcement efforts use prosecutor-led and data analyst-driven teams designed to identify and bring those who stole pandemic relief funds to justice.

For more information on the Department’s response to the pandemic or if anyone has information about allegations of 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 their Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.

United States Attorney Erek L. Barron commended the FBI for their work in this investigation and thanked SBA's Office of Inspector General along with BCPD. Mr. Barron also thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Paul A. Riley, Jared M. Beim, and Bijon A. Mostoufi who are prosecuting this federal case.

For more information on Maryland U.S Attorney’s Office priorities and resources available for community help visit www.justice.gov/usao/md.

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