A Lehigh Acres handyman who told the federal government his business had made $206,998 in a year — when bank records showed $19,843.50 — has pleaded guilty to fraudulently taking $413,900 in COVID relief money and spending it on a luxury SUV, a heavy-duty pickup truck and $172,505 in cash withdrawals. Thakur Sukhdeo, 40, of Lehigh Acres in Lee County, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and two counts of illegal monetary transactions, U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe of the Middle District of Florida announced on Wednesday, November 4, in Fort Myers.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Middle District of Florida / U.S. Department of Justice (Nov. 4, 2026)

Sukhdeo has agreed to forfeit $413,900 — the full proceeds of the offence, the Justice Department said. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison for each wire fraud count and up to 10 years in prison for each illegal monetary transaction count. The case was investigated by the FBI and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Redavid; Assistant U.S. Attorney Suzanne C. Nebesky is handling the forfeiture. A guilty plea is a conviction on the counts pleaded to; sentencing is a separate, later step, and no sentencing date was announced in the government's releases on Wednesday.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, Middle District of Florida / U.S. Department of Justice (Nov. 4, 2026)

What court records say he claimed

During the COVID pandemic, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) offered loans to small businesses under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. Beginning around April 2021, according to court records cited in the plea announcement, Sukhdeo engaged in a scheme to fraudulently obtain the $413,900 by applying for an EIDL loan using false pretences and representations. In the loan paperwork he claimed he owned a handyman business that made $206,998 in 2019; bank records later revealed the business made $19,843.50 that year — less than a tenth of the figure claimed. Business Observer, citing the indictment, named the company as J.R. Handyman Pro's LLC and reported that Sukhdeo was its only signatory. As part of the loan, he promised to use the EIDL funds only on business expenses.

Source: Business Observer, Florida (Nov. 4, 2026)

Where the money went

The SBA deposited the $413,900 on March 24, 2022. Shortly after moving the money into the business account he created the next day, Sukhdeo used the EIDL funds to purchase the luxury vehicle for $68,984.61 and the truck for $93,994.42, made numerous cash withdrawals totalling $172,505, and made other personal purchases, the Justice Department said. Within one year, he had spent all of the EIDL funds. The spending is the heart of the illegal-monetary-transactions counts: EIDL money was restricted to business expenses, so each large personal purchase made with the loan proceeds was itself charged as a separate federal offence alongside the wire fraud of obtaining the loan.

Seized vehicles, a court-ordered forfeiture, and a 2024 indictment

The FBI subsequently seized both of Sukhdeo's vehicles, and on January 13, 2025, the court ordered the civil forfeiture of both vehicles — so the Jaguar and the Sierra were taken by the government almost two years before the criminal case ended. The criminal case itself began earlier: Sukhdeo was charged in October 2024, when he was 38, in an indictment announced by then-U.S. Attorney Roger B. Handberg that also gave notice the United States intended to forfeit the two vehicles and $414,000 alleged to be traceable to the offence. Just over two years after that indictment, the case has now ended in a guilty plea rather than a trial.

A small-business loan built for a real emergency

The EIDL program was part of the federal pandemic response built on the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, enacted in March 2020: low-interest federal loans meant to keep genuine small businesses — the handyman firms, trucking operators, restaurants and shops that could not trade normally — alive through the shutdowns. Eligibility and loan size turned on the applicant's own statements about the business, which is why the gap between the claimed $206,998 and the bank-record $19,843.50 mattered: on the government's case, the loan was sized and approved on numbers the bank records did not support, and then spent in ways the loan terms expressly barred.

Part of a wider COVID-fraud reckoning

Business Observer reported that the case is part of a long-running crackdown on COVID-relief fraud run by a federal task force made up of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida's criminal, asset recovery, appellate and civil divisions, together with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. The scale explains the persistence: the SBA's Office of Inspector General estimated in 2023 that more than $200 billion in Paycheck Protection Program and EIDL funds — roughly 17 percent of what was disbursed — was potentially fraudulent, an estimate the SBA itself disputed as too high while producing a lower figure of its own. Either way, prosecutors are still working through pandemic-era loans years after the money went out, and this plea — on a scheme the government dates to 2021 and a loan paid in 2022 — is one of the latest.

What it means for honest small businesses, including Florida's Punjabi contractors and truckers

Lee County and the Fort Myers–Lehigh Acres corridor are home to growing Punjabi and South Asian communities of contractors, handymen, convenience-store owners and truck drivers — exactly the class of small businesses EIDL was built for, and many of them took these loans honestly and kept them for years. This case is the cautionary file for anyone who did: the prosecution was built from bank records. The revenue figure on the application was checked against the business's actual bank history, the deposit was traced account to account, and each large personal purchase was itemised to the cent — $68,984.61 and $93,994.42. The practical lesson costs nothing: keep the application numbers provable from bank statements, keep relief money in a separate business account, spend it only on the business purposes promised, and keep the records — because the file can be opened years later.

What happens next

Sukhdeo now awaits sentencing in the Middle District of Florida; the Justice Department's announcement set out the maximum penalties — 20 years per wire fraud count and 10 years per illegal monetary transactions count — but the actual sentence will be decided by the sentencing judge, and no date for that hearing was given in Wednesday's releases. The agreed forfeiture of $413,900 is separate from any prison term, and the two vehicles were already ordered civilly forfeited in January 2025. Awaaz Punjab will update this story when a sentencing date or sentence is announced.