A Sparta man who filed 15 fraudulent applications to steal more than $2.1 million in federal COVID-19 relief money has been sentenced to 78 months — six and a half years — in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey announced. Nikenson Jean Mathurin, 46, who also used the names “Nik Mathurin” and “Jean Mathurin,” was sentenced on October 28 by U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp in federal court in Trenton. On top of the prison term, Shipp ordered Mathurin to serve three years of supervised release after he gets out and to pay $2,131,747 in restitution — effectively, to give the money back on top of serving the time.

Source: U.S. Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey, via NJToday, Nov. 4, 2026

How the scheme worked

Prosecutors said that starting in April 2020 — in the first chaotic weeks of the pandemic, when relief money was moving as fast as the government could push it out — Mathurin submitted 15 fraudulent applications for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) funds on behalf of businesses he said he owned. According to court documents and the evidence at trial, the applications misstated the things the programs paid out on: the businesses' average monthly payroll, their gross revenue and their number of employees, among other details. They were backed by fake tax documents and payroll records. Lenders and the U.S. Small Business Administration, relying on those papers, paid out more than $2.1 million, prosecutors said.

The trial and the verdict

Mathurin did not plead guilty. A federal jury heard the case over a four-day trial in May 2026 and found him guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering — the laundering count covering what was done with the money after it arrived. The sentence followed five months later, on October 28, in Trenton, and was publicly announced this week by U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer. Mathurin was represented by attorney Serguel Akiti. He will serve the 78 months in federal custody and then remain under court supervision for three more years, with the $2,131,747 restitution order hanging over his earnings for years beyond that.

Who built the case

Frazer credited the investigation to special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation, working under Special Agent in Charge Jenifer L. Piovesan — the IRS's criminal arm is a lead agency in pandemic-relief fraud because the schemes run through tax documents and business filings. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Stark and Fatime Meka Cano of the U.S. Attorney's Criminal Division in Newark. It was brought through the District of New Jersey COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Strike Force, one of five such teams the Justice Department set up nationwide to pursue large-scale pandemic relief fraud, including schemes run by criminal organisations and transnational actors — a structure that is still producing sentencings more than six years after the money went out.

Source: WFPG (Townsquare Media), NJ man sentenced in $2.1M COVID relief scam, Nov. 4, 2026

The background: what PPP and EIDL were for

Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program and the pandemic EIDL programme in 2020 to keep small businesses alive through the shutdowns — forgivable or low-cost federal money meant to cover payroll and keep workers employed while revenue stopped. Because the programmes were designed for speed, much of the checking was done after the money moved, which is why the fraud reckoning has come in waves of investigations, trials and sentencings ever since. Sparta, in Sussex County in New Jersey's northwest, is a small township; a $2.1 million take from two emergency programmes is, in local terms, an enormous sum — the kind of case the strike forces were built to find.

Why New Jersey readers should care

New Jersey is one of Awaaz Punjab's largest reader states, and its Punjabi and wider South Asian communities run exactly the kind of small businesses — shops, restaurants, trucking and service firms across Edison, Jersey City, Paterson and beyond — that PPP and EIDL were written for. Cases like this one are the other side of that story: money taken with fake payrolls was money a real business did not get, and every strike-force sentencing is also a reminder to legitimate borrowers to keep their application records. The Justice Department asks anyone with information about attempted COVID-19 relief fraud to call the National Center for Disaster Fraud hotline at 866-720-5721 or file a complaint through the centre's online form.