Date: April 28, 2025
Contact: [email protected]
Wilmington, NC — A Wake Forest woman was sentenced to six months in prison, followed by one year of home confinement, on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, for conspiring to defraud the United States government with respect to COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program loans. Sonya Lenise Davis pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on August 7, 2024.
According to court documents and other information presented in court, Davis and others lied on applications to the Small Business Association for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. These loans were a form of COVID-19 relief funding to help keep small businesses afloat during the pandemic. Davis did not qualify for these loans, but nevertheless lied, and helped others to lie, to steal money from the program. On her own loan application, Davis falsified information about her company, Sonya’s Braiding, by inflating the number of employees and income. Davis also assisted others to acquire and submit fake documents to bolster wage claims on their own PPP loans using fake IRS forms. In some instances, Davis also assisted conspirators to obtain fake bank statements. As a result, Davis and others illegally obtained more than $85,000 in Covid relief loan money.
Daniel P. Bubar, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, made the announcement after sentencing by Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II. The Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) investigated the case and Assistant U.S. Attorney William Gilmore and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Labresh prosecuted the case.
IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.