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If you've ever sat in the back of an Uber wondering what your driver's side hustle is, Bruce Choi of Los Angeles' Koreatown neighborhood may have just redefined the concept entirely.
Federal prosecutors allege that Choi, 34, didn't just drive people around for a living... He also allegedly invented an entire company, fabricated a payroll that would make mid-size corporations jealous, and walked away with nearly $2 million in pandemic relief money that he then funneled straight into cryptocurrency. Bold strategy. Spectacularly illegal, but bold.
Choi was arrested Tuesday at San Francisco International Airport after stepping off a flight from Japan, which, in hindsight, is not a great look when you're under federal investigation, according to KTLA. The Department of Justice charged him with four counts of wire fraud affecting a financial institution and one count of transactional money laundering.
According to the indictment unsealed Wednesday, Choi applied for a $1,995,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan by presenting himself as the CEO of a company called "Premier Republic." The business, he claimed, had an average monthly payroll of $798,000 and had been fully operational as of mid-February 2020, complete with salaried employees and payroll taxes.
There was just one small problem: Premier Republic had no operations and no employees. None. Zero. It was, by all accounts, a company that existed primarily in Choi's imagination and on some very creative paperwork.
To support his application, Choi allegedly submitted a fabricated bank statement showing deposits and transfers totaling $798,000 — for the period of February 1 through February 31, 2020. Sharp-eyed readers may notice that February 31st does not exist. Prosecutors, apparently, also noticed.
Not content with one alleged fraud, Choi reportedly also filed an Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) application under the business name simply called "Bruce" — listing it as a real estate firm with 10 employees and gross revenues of $475 million in 2019. A $475 million real estate operation named "Bruce." No such business existed either.
Between the PPP loan and a $10,000 EIDL advance from the U.S. Treasury, Choi allegedly collected just over $2 million in pandemic relief funds meant to keep real businesses and real workers afloat during one of the most economically devastating periods in modern American history.
The money was then wired to a Kraken cryptocurrency exchange account, according to the DOJ. Because of course it was.
For the car enthusiast crowd wondering whether any of this funded something exciting — no Lamborghini drama here, no garage full of JDM imports. Prosecutors have seized nearly 40 bitcoins and other cryptocurrency assets as part of the investigation. At today's prices, that's a significant chunk of digital change, though it fluctuates enough that even Choi's attorneys probably can't nail down the exact number without refreshing a price tracker first.
Choi is expected to make his initial court appearance Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, with a subsequent arraignment scheduled in Los Angeles federal court in the coming weeks.
If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 30 years in federal prison for each wire fraud charge, plus an additional 10 years on the money laundering count. That's a sentencing exposure that would make even the most committed crypto bull think twice about the risk-reward ratio.
The PPP program, administered during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, was designed to help struggling small businesses keep workers employed. It was not designed to serve as seed funding for anonymous crypto accounts belonging to fictitious companies named after single first names.
As for the rideshare career, it may be on pause for a while. This is definitely nowhere near as wholesome as our latest DoorDasher story, I'll tell you that.