PPP Indictments - Suburban

Is the dam finally breaking?

• Two south suburban women and a man are charged in federal court with working as illegal brokers for people who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Paycheck Protection Program.

  Amanda Heller of Frankfort, Sarah Stokes of Crestwood and James Townsend of Midlothian were indicted on wire fraud charges. They’re free in lieu of bail. Heller declined to comment except to say, “It’s a charge at this time, not a conviction.” Stokes and Townsend couldn’t be reached.

  Heller, Stokes and Townsend had filed applications for dozens of loans on behalf of sole proprietors of businesses that didn’t actually exist, according to an indictment unsealed last month and applications for search warrants unsealed Monday.

  The trio got kickbacks of $5,000 to $10,000 for each successful application to the program, which began in early April 2020 and ended in late May 2021, according to the indictment.

Maybe they had to get the suburban cases in the system before they go to town on the urban dwellers who had assembly lines of fraud rivaling anything suburbanites could come up with.