An Egg Harbor Township man who admitted to defrauding a federal program out of $1.3 million was sentenced to 30 months in prison Monday.
Jeremy Earley, 42, who also is listed as living in Lilburn, Ga., pleaded guilty June 1, to one count of engaging in a monetary transaction in criminally derived property.
The case was related to fraudulent applications for the Paycheck Protection Program on behalf of two companies owned by Earley.
His co-defendant, Rhonda Thomas, filed the paperwork on behalf of the businesses, showing dozens of employees and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent monthly on payroll.
But it was all a lie.
The D2R Agency had 17 employees and paid out more than $1.7 million in payroll for 2019, according to IRS paperwork Thomas attached to the approved application for $362,500.
The agency really had just one employee paid minimum wage,
Earley got the money in 2020, and then wrote a check to Thomas for $108,750.
The next year, Thomas again applied for a loan on behalf of another Earley-owned company, More Life Records, with an address in the 2700 block of Fire Road.
This time she wrote that the company paid out $382,400 a month in payroll to 46 employees. The accompanying 2019 IRS filing claimed nearly $4.6 million paid out in wages.
But that company had no employees and paid out nothing, an investigation found.
Earley received that check for $956,250, and then sent three checks to Thomas totaling $286,875.
Thomas, 39, previously pleaded guilty to bank fraud conspiracy and money launder, and was sentenced to five years in federal prison. She is currently in the Federal Correctional Institute in Danbury, Conn., with a release date of July 10, 2027.
Earley got 2½ years. He could have faced a maximum of 10 years in prison.
He also will have three years of supervised release, and must pay restitution of nearly $1.48 million.
