The FBI arrested the mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts, charging him with stealing pandemic assistance money and siphoning it to his political campaign account.
Brian DePena, 61, also used some of the $1.5 million in pandemic loan money to pay his taxes and pay off mortgages, authorities said.
“This was emergency financial assistance meant to be a safety net for struggling businesses, not Mr. DePena’s own personal ATM,” said Ted E. Docks, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Boston.
Mr. DePena got his first pandemic assistance, an Economic Injury Disaster Loan, in 2020, collecting nearly $150,000 to help a commercial property he owned, Tenares Tire Services.
By the summer of 2021, he was struggling to pay off hard-money loans from private lenders on the tire business and other properties. Rebuffed by private lenders, he turned to the Small Business Administration for an additional $350,000 in EIDL money.
Prosecutors said he then sent $85,000 of that to the IRS to pay off his personal taxes and pumped $90,000 into his mayoral campaign.
He applied for yet another chunk of EIDL money in the fall of 2021 and sent about $42,000 of that to his campaign account, investigators said.
An additional $883,000 was used to pay off his high-interest private loans.
The IRS said the government wouldn’t have approved the pandemic assistance loans if it knew they were being used to pay off his personal debts or fund his campaign.
Mr. DePena went on to win the election for mayor in November 2021. The Democrat was reelected last year.
No lawyer was listed in the federal court docket Friday morning.
The Washington Times has sought comment from the mayor’s office.
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