Ex-NASA exec sentenced for stealing $350K in COVID relief funds — he spent some of the money on a hypoallergenic French bulldog
The sky was the limit.
A former senior NASA executive has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing over $350,000 in COVID-19 relief funds and using the money to pay off his car loan, credit card debt and to buy an expensive purebred dog, prosecutors said.
Andrew Tezna, 36, of Leesburg, Va. had admitted he submitted fraudulent applications to the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program for businesses that didn’t exist, and even filed for unemployment benefits for his mother-in-law, who was retired.
Tezna pleaded guilty to bank fraud in April in a deal reached with prosecutors ahead of him being criminally indicted. He has also been ordered to pay $285,000 in restitution.
“ ‘This defendant used the identities of others to carry out a brazen scheme in which he exploited taxpayer-funded programs during the global pandemic for his own personal benefit.‘ ”
Prosecutors say Tezna, who earned $181,000 as a policy director for the space agency, had gone into the pandemic with a mountain of debts, and soon began fraudulently applying for government relief programs to pay them off, even though he wasn’t entitled to the financial aid.
Among the bills prosecutors said he paid off were an $18,447 car loan for a Toyota Sienna minivan; $48,961 on a loan for a swimming pool he had built at his house; $159,700 in credit card debt and $6,450 to a dog breeder for a hypoallergenic French bulldog. He also used the money to pay $5,727 for his Best Buy credit card and to cover the cost of a Disney Vacation Club membership timeshare, according to court documents.
“This defendant used the identities of others to carry out a brazen scheme in which he exploited taxpayer-funded programs during the global pandemic for his own personal benefit,” said Raj Parekh, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
A message left with Tezna’s lawyer was not immediately returned.
In court filings his legal team argued that their client wasn’t a serial fraudster seeking to enrich himself, but had spent all the illicitly obtained money on his family. They said he had fallen into heavy debt because he is bad at managing money and had been living well above his means.
They said he had worked for NASA for six years, but as a result of his guilty plea, lost that job and had recently been working as a loader at a Lowe’s Home Improvement Center.
According to court documents, Tezna had received $272,284 under the Paycheck Protection Program, and an additional $69,500 from the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program. He separately pocketed $15,950 in unemployment benefits from the state of Virginia, where he had filed on behalf of his mother-in-law, who was retired and did not qualify for the benefits. Prosecutors say that Tezna provided falsified tax returns and false payroll expenses in support of the fraudulent PPP loan applications.
