Two brothers in Marin County have been sentenced for defrauding the federal authorities of about $2 million in pandemic reduction funds.
Caesar Oskan of San Rafael, 67, was sentenced to 18 months in jail and ordered to pay almost $1,493,904 in restitution.
His twin, Ester Ozkar of Novato, was sentenced to a yr in jail and ordered to pay $509,038.41 in restitution and a $1 million nice.
The brothers carried out separate schemes that concerned creating fictitious corporations to use for reduction funds, authorities alleged. They did so via the Financial Damage Catastrophe Loans program and the Paycheck Safety Program, which aimed to assist companies hold employees on the books throughout the coronavirus disaster.
Oskan — often known as Sezer Ozkan — submitted 27 functions for assist for pretend corporations with pretend payroll and tax paperwork. The scheme netted him greater than $1.7 million in authorities loans and advances, the prosecution mentioned.
Ozkar — often known as Eser Ozkay — submitted eight fraudulent functions and picked up almost $500,000 in assist.
The federal funds have been supplied to employers whose corporations existed earlier than Feb. 15, 2020. Oskan and Ozkar created their fictitious entities after that, however they modified their state incorporation paperwork to backdate the businesses’ formation.
The defendants pleaded responsible in Could to creating false statements to monetary establishments. Oskan was sentenced on Feb. 13 by U.S. District Choose Charles Breyer in San Francisco. Ozkar was sentenced by the identical choose on Dec. 15.
Legal professionals for each defendants requested the choose to spare them from jail, noting their cooperation with authorities.
In a sentencing memorandum to the choose, Colin Cooper, the protection lawyer for Oskan, mentioned his shopper is “humiliated and deeply ashamed by his conduct.”
“Mr. Oskan tried to pay again a few of the loans previous to studying in regards to the federal investigation,” Cooper wrote. “He succeeded in paying again $105,600 earlier than his arrest, and subsequently has paid again the remaining.”
Ozkar’s lawyer, Karen McConville, wrote that her shopper has “demonstrated his honest regret and extraordinary acceptance of duty.”
“At an early stage he took steps to make full restitution, and all of the funds that have been taken have been repaid,” she wrote. “The offense occurred throughout a interval through which Mr. Ozkar’s stability — monetary and emotional — was disrupted by the lack of his wine nation tourism enterprise as a result of latest wildfires, coupled with a way of frustration that he had unfairly been denied the catastrophe reduction mortgage for which he had utilized via the Small Enterprise Administration.
“He realizes absolutely, after all, that none of those circumstances can in any approach justify the acquisition of presidency loans based mostly on false data, however his actions have been influenced as a lot by misguided ardour as by greed.”
The choose ordered Oskan to give up to jail by Could 25 and Ozkar by March 15.