A Fayetteville man who prosecutors say spent half a decade fleecing pandemic relief programs and lenders was sentenced in federal court in Atlanta to two years and nine months in prison, after fraudulently obtaining roughly $1.25 million in COVID-19 relief and auto loans.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Northern District of Georgia

U.S. District Judge Victoria M. Calvert sentenced Hugh A. Brown, Jr., 35, of Fayetteville, in Fayette County, Georgia, and ordered him to pay $1,244,243.81 in restitution to the Small Business Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and financial institutions. After prison, Brown must serve five years of supervised release. He had pleaded guilty on June 3, 2026, to bank fraud conspiracy and bank fraud.

Three frauds, running side by side for five years

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the indictment and other information presented in court, the first fraud came in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. Brown applied for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan by submitting false payroll information and fake IRS tax forms to a federally insured bank. On the strength of that bogus application, he received a $162,500 PPP loan — money Congress had created to keep workers on payrolls, not to enrich an applicant with invented paperwork.

The second fraud followed in 2022. Prosecutors say Brown fraudulently claimed Employee Retention Credits (ERCs) — a refundable tax credit designed to encourage employers to keep paying employees during COVID-19 — on behalf of his company. After filing fraudulent tax returns, he received seven United States Treasury checks totalling $644,452.98 in ERCs and other credits, the largest single stream in the case.

The third fraud ran the longest. From at least February 2022 through February 2025, Brown obtained fraudulent bank and credit union loans worth nearly $450,000, prosecutors say, by submitting fake documents, misrepresenting his employment and income information, and providing fictitious vehicle details as loan collateral — the car-loan scheme in the case's name.

What the officials said

"This defendant shamelessly fleeced federal taxpayers and financial institutions over half a decade through various loan fraud schemes," said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. "My office will continue to prosecute and seek prison time for anyone who abuses government relief programs." Acting Assistant Special Agent in Charge Patrick M. Palmer of IRS Criminal Investigation's Atlanta Field Office said submitting false information to obtain pandemic relief and using fraudulent documents to secure bank and credit union loans "are serious offenses that undermine the integrity of our financial institutions and erode public trust."

Rodney M. Hopkins, Inspector in Charge of the Atlanta Division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, said the defendant "stole money earmarked to help people in a time of economic uncertainty and used it to increase their bank account," adding: "You commit fraud, exploit our financial systems, and do harm to our communities, we will find you and bring you to justice." The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, with valuable assistance from Homeland Security Investigations.

Why these two programs keep appearing in fraud court

The Paycheck Protection Program and the Employee Retention Credit were two of the biggest emergency lifelines Washington built in 2020. PPP offered forgivable loans through banks so small businesses could keep paying staff; the ERC paid employers back, through the tax system, for wages paid while their businesses were shut or restricted. Both programs moved enormous sums quickly, on paperwork applicants largely certified themselves — and both have produced a long tail of federal prosecutions, in Georgia and across the country, as investigators work through the claims years later. Brown's case follows that pattern exactly: a 2020 loan, 2022 tax credits, and bank loans running to February 2025, all unravelled in one prosecution.

For Georgia's small-business owners — including the many immigrant-owned trucking, logistics, retail and restaurant businesses around Atlanta and Fayette County that kept receipts and filed honestly — cases like this are the other side of the relief story: every dollar taken on fake payroll forms and invented vehicle collateral was a dollar taken from programs their taxes fund and their honest applications competed for, and the restitution order is meant to pay $1,244,243.81 of it back to the SBA, the IRS and the lenders.

The sentence was announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta. No further court date in Brown's case was announced with the sentence.