A Fulton County man was ordered to pay $64,462 in restitution in connection with fraud related to economic assistance programs that stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michael L. Patch, 66, pleaded guilty last fall in U.S. District Court in Peoria to bank fraud and wire fraud in connection with schemes to get money he wasn’t entitled to from the Paycheck Protection Program and the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.
He was indicted in September 2021 on charges that alleged he gave misleading information regarding his now-closed Vernon Street Grill, which was located in Farmington. That was to get more money from the federal government, prosecutors have said.
But his attorney wrote in a sentencing memo that his client’s conduct occurred when the “state of Illinois was moving to collect taxes from Patch’s failing business.”
Prison, he said, would not be appropriate as Patch had no criminal past. There was no need to deter him from a life of crime as “he has never engaged in criminal conduct until an extreme confluence of events occurred during the recent worldwide pandemic,” the attorney wrote in the memo.
But U.S. District Judge James Shadid opted for a 90-day prison sentence, after which Patch will serve five years of supervised release, the federal version of parole. He has until mid-October to surrender himself to U.S. Marshals and begin to serve his sentence.
Source : centralillinoisproud.com
