Mayerlyn Cordero of Allentown, in Pennsylvania's Lehigh County, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, October 27, in federal court to five counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to file false claims, admitting that she filed 13 fraudulent pandemic loan applications that brought in more than $1 million in illicit funds, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Eastern District of Pennsylvania (reported Oct 27, 2026)
According to the Justice Department, Cordero ran the scheme through her tax preparation business, May Tax. The loan applications, for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) programme, used inflated employee figures to obtain money the applicants were not entitled to under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
The case had a second arm. Prosecutors say Cordero also used stolen personally identifiable information provided by a co-conspirator to file 23 false federal tax returns — the kind of identity theft that leaves the real taxpayer to untangle a rejected return or a missing refund with the Internal Revenue Service.
A case that began with a February indictment
Cordero was indicted on February 19 on five counts of wire fraud and a single count of conspiracy to file false claims. She was picked up in Florida on February 26 and ordered to appear for arraignment in federal court in Allentown on March 19, lehighvalleylive.com reported. Her guilty plea on October 27 resolves the charges against her; sentencing is scheduled for February 3, 2027, when she faces up to 20 years in prison on each wire fraud count and 10 years on the conspiracy count, with the actual sentence to be set by the judge under federal sentencing guidelines.
Source: lehighvalleylive.com via CPA Practice Advisor
The wider Allentown investigation
Cordero's plea is one piece of a much larger Allentown tax-fraud investigation. An earlier Justice Department complaint charged Jose Baez and Jessenia Cordero, a married couple from Allentown, with using stolen identities to file at least 316 fraudulent federal tax returns and 168 fraudulent Pandemic Unemployment Assistance applications through JB Multiservices, a business on North Eighth Street in Allentown; investigators traced at least 674 false returns to an internet address registered to that business location, and the 316 returns alone requested at least $1.8 million in fraudulent refunds, prosecutors said. Court reporting on the wider case put the superseding indictment's figure at $5.5 million and described Mayerlyn Cordero as accused of scheming with Baez and Jessenia Cordero on the $1 million in COVID funds covered by her plea. Jessenia Cordero had pleaded guilty in 2017 to criminal conspiracy in a separate scheme that filed fake federal tax returns using stolen Social Security numbers to net more than $4.3 million, and served a four-year sentence.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice — Two Allentown Residents Charged in SIRF Scheme
Why tax-preparer fraud hits immigrant families hardest
Tax preparers hold the keys to a family's finances: Social Security numbers, bank account details, children's information and prior returns. When a preparer misuses that access — filing returns the client never saw, or selling identity data into a fraud ring — the victims are often working families, including immigrant and Punjabi diaspora households in places like the Lehigh Valley, who may learn of the theft only when a legitimate refund is frozen or the IRS writes to say a return was already filed in their name. Allentown and the wider Lehigh Valley have a growing Punjabi and South Asian community, including truck drivers and small business owners who leaned on PPP and EIDL loans during the pandemic — the same programmes this scheme drained.
General information, not legal advice: taxpayers can request an IRS Identity Protection PIN, check their IRS online account for returns filed in their name, and confirm a paid preparer has a valid PTIN and signs every return. A preparer who refuses to sign, or who asks you to sign a blank return, is a warning sign.
What happens next
Cordero returns to court for sentencing on February 3, 2027. The plea was announced as the Justice Department's National Fraud Enforcement Division, created on April 7, 2026, continues its run of pandemic-relief prosecutions — a reminder that PPP and EIDL files from 2020 and 2021 are still producing arrests, pleas and prison sentences nearly six years later.