Oklahoma City PPP Loan Fraud Lawyers

Oklahoma City PPP Loan Fraud Lawyers

You’re sitting in Oklahoma City thinking you got away with something. The PPP loan came through in 2020. Maybe 2021. And here we are in 2025 and nothing has happened. No FBI agents at your door. No letters from the Department of Justice. No phone calls from investigators. Five years of silence and you’ve started telling yourself that if they were coming, they would have come by now.

That silence isn’t what you think it is. The quiet in Oklahoma doesn’t mean you’re safe. It means they haven’t finished building the case yet.

Welcome to Spodek Law Group. Our goal here is education first – helping you understand what you’re actually facing before you make decisions that could shape the rest of your life. Todd Spodek has represented clients in federal criminal matters for decades, including individuals in the Western District of Oklahoma who assumed the investigation had moved on. It hadn’t.

The Oklahoma Silence That Isn’t Safety

Heres the thing about federal investigations that most people in Oklahoma City dont understand: the FBI doesnt announce when their investigating you. Grand jury proceedings are secret by law. When prosecutors subpoena your bank records, the bank cant tell you. When they pull your tax returns, you dont get a courtesy call.

The Western District of Oklahoma has had a dedicated Coronavirus Fraud Task Force running since April 2021. Thats over four years of investigations. Four years of building cases. Four years of subpoenas going out to banks and accountants and business partners while you went about your normal life thinking nobody was paying attention.

Every case hitting courtrooms in Oklahoma City right now started as a quiet investigation years ago. The sentences being handed down in 2024 and 2025 are for loan applications from 2020. The government isnt in a hurry. Their methodical. And by the time you hear from them, the investigation isnt beginning – its essentialy over.

Inside the Western District Task Force Machine

Let me explain how this actualy works, because most people get it completly wrong.

The Task Force isnt just the FBI. According to the DOJ, it “combines the efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute fraud related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” That means the IRS Criminal Investigation division. The SBA Office of Inspector General. State tax authorities. Local agencies. Their all sharing information. Their all looking at the same data from different angles.

When your federal PPP application said you had ten employees making $400,000 in payroll, and your Oklahoma state tax filings show something different, someone in that network is going to notice. The data matching happens automaticaly. The referrals get generated. And investigators start pulling on threads.

Think about how the SBA flags applications. Their looking for businesses that didnt exist before 2020. Payroll numbers that dont match tax records. Multiple applications from the same IP address. Bank accounts opened just before the application. Employees listed who never filed taxes showing income from your business. Every one of these triggers creates a referral. Every referral becomes a file. And every file sits in a queue waiting for an agent to open it.

The FBI and IRS-CI agents working these cases arent overwhelmed amateurs. Their specialists. Their career federal law enforcement with decades of experience in financial crimes. When they open your file, they already have access to your bank records, your tax returns, your corporate filings, and whatever your accountant or bookkeeper has turned over. The investigation happens in silence because it happens through paperwork, not interviews.

Heres the uncomfortable reality: Oklahoma isnt too small to matter. The Western District has been aggresively pursuing these cases. The federal conviction rate exceeds 90%. And 81% of defendants sentenced for pandemic relief fraud recieve prison time. Not probation. Not home confinement. Prison.

Real Oklahoma City Cases: Names, Amounts, Sentences

Lets talk about what actualy happened to real people in this district. Not hypotheticals. Not what might happen. What already happened to people who thought they were safe.

Madinah Malikah Montgomery from Oklahoma City was sentenced in November 2024. She got 24 months in federal prison and has to pay $300,000 in restitution. Her scheme? She filed three seperate EIDL loan applications over a three-month span, totaling $385,000. She claimed she owned a salon with ten employees and $600,000 in revenue. She recieved $300,000 before they caught her. Shes in federal prison now.

Russell Kim from Edmond – thats just outside Oklahoma City – pleaded guilty in September 2025. He ran a restaurant called R&D. Heres the thing about his case: the restaurant had actualy closed in March 2020. It was already shut down when he submitted his PPP application. He submitted payroll information for employees who no longer worked there. He got $174,000. Now hes facing up to 40 years in federal prison and fines up to $1.25 million.

Sheri Lynn Vickery from Blanchard got 22 months and $727,300 in restitution. She was an office manager – not even the business owner – who inflated payroll numbers on a company PPP application. She didnt get to keep the money. The company got the money. But she filed the paperwork, and now shes the one in prison.

Brian Lee Foster from Norman got 24 months for a fraud amount of just $21,474.76. Less than twenty-two thousand dollars. Two years in federal prison. The judge didnt care that the amount was small. Federal sentencing guidelines dont have a “too small to punish” exception.

Every one of these people probly told themselves Oklahoma was too small to matter. Every one of them was wrong.

When the Office Manager Gets Charged Instead of the Owner

Heres something that should concern anyone who helped file a fraudulent PPP application on behalf of someone else. The Sheri Vickery case shows exactly how this plays out.

Vickery wasnt the owner of Coil Chem LLC. She was the office manager. Her job was to handle administrative tasks. And one of those tasks, apparently, was submitting a PPP loan application in April 2020 that inflated the companys payroll costs.

Think about what happened next. The application was approved. $727,300 was transfered into the companys operating account. And when the investigation came, who got charged? Not just the company. Not just the owners. The office manager who filed the paperwork.

Being an employee dosent protect you. If you knew the application was false and you submitted it anyway, your a defendant. If you helped prepare fraudulent documents, your a defendant. The government dosent care that you were “just following orders” or “just doing your job.” They care that you signed your name to something false.

Vickery is doing 22 months in federal prison right now. Shes not getting paid. Shes not with her family. Shes sitting in a federal facility because she submitted paperwork she knew was wrong.

The Family That Committed Fraud Together

In August 2023, federal prosecutors unsealed a 28-count indictment against six Oklahoma residents. The names: Marquita Deshawn Shaw, Amie Street, Corey Donta Shaw, Eric Dewayne Shaw, Marqus Dejuan Shaw, and Shatara Marie Brevelle. Four of them from Oklahoma City. Two from Lawton.

This wasnt random strangers who happened to commit similar crimes. This was a family. Parents. Children. In-laws. All of them working together to obtain nearly $1 million in PPP loans for fictitious businesses.

The charges tell the story. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Wire fraud. Money laundering. Making false statements to a financial institution. Making false statements. False representation of a social security number. Twenty-eight counts total.

According to the indictment, they created businesses that didnt exist. They submitted fake bank statements. They altered identification documents. They fabricated tax records. The whole operation was built on lies, and when it collapsed, everyone got charged.

Think about what that looks like in practice. Six people. Nearly $1 million. When one of them gets called before a grand jury, what are their options? They can refuse to testify and face contempt charges. They can testify and potentialy implicate themselves. Or they can cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter sentence – which means testifying against their own family.

Heres what happens when family members commit fraud together: everyone becomes a potential witness against everyone else. The government dosent offer deals to one person – they offer deals to whoever cooperates first. The prosecutor sits down with your cousin and says: “Tell us everything about how this worked, and we’ll recommend two years instead of ten.” What do you think your cousin is going to do?

Family loyalty dosent survive a 20-year prison sentence. Blood relationships dont matter when someone is facing real prison time. The Shaw family is learning this lesson right now in Oklahoma City.

$21,474 Got Brian Foster Two Years in Federal Prison

One of the most dangerous assumptions people make about PPP fraud is that the government is only going after big cases. You tell yourself your loan was only $50,000. Or $30,000. Or $20,000. Surely the feds have bigger fish to fry. Surely their focused on the multi-million dollar schemes.

Brian Lee Foster from Norman proved that assumption wrong.

His fraud amount was $21,474.76. Not twenty million. Not two hundred thousand. Twenty-one thousand four hundred seventy-four dollars and seventy-six cents.

He submitted false income information on his PPP application. He pleaded guilty. And on sentencing day, U.S. District Judge Scott Palk gave him 24 months in federal prison. Two years. Plus three years of supervised release after that. Plus $21,474.76 in restitution.

Read that again. Less than twenty-two thousand dollars in fraud got a man two years in federal prison. If you think your “small” loan isnt worth prosecuting, you need to understand that Brian Foster probly thought the same thing.

There is no amount too small for prosecution in the Western District of Oklahoma.

The Restaurant Was Already Closed

The Russell Kim case deserves special attention because it shows exactly how obvious fraud gets caught – and how long the consequences take to arrive.

Kim operated a restaurant called R&D in Edmond. In March 2020, the restaurant closed. Shut down. No more customers. No more employees. The business was done.

But when PPP money became available, Kim saw an oppertunity. According to court documents, he submitted a PPP loan application that included payroll information for employees who no longer worked for R&D. He got $174,000 approved and transferred.

That was 2020. For years, nothing happened. No investigation that he knew about. No charges. Life went on.

Then in August 2025, he was charged by federal Information with making a false statement to a financial institution and money laundering. In September 2025, he pleaded guilty. Now hes waiting to be sentenced, and hes facing up to 40 years in federal prison and $1.25 million in fines.

Five years. The investigation took five years. But it was happening the whole time. Every month that felt like safety was actualy the government building its case. Collecting bank records. Verifying employment records. Cross-referencing tax filings. By the time they charged him, they knew everything.

Heres what makes the Kim case especialy instructive. The fraud was obvious. A restaurant that closed in March 2020 clearly didnt have employees to pay in April 2020. The payroll records he submitted were for people who no longer worked there. The bank could have caught this. The SBA could have caught this. Anyone who looked at the application alongside the actual business status would have seen immediately that something was wrong.

And yet it took five years. Not because the government missed it – because the government was building an airtight case. They wanted bank records. They wanted tax records. They wanted witness statements. They wanted everything documented and organized before they made their move. By the time Russell Kim got charged, there was nothing to argue about. The evidence was complete.

Your Options If You Took a Questionable PPP Loan

If your reading this because you took a PPP loan in Oklahoma City and your not sure whether it was legitimate, you have three basic options. None of them are perfect. Each comes with its own risks. But doing nothing is almost certainley the worst strategy.

Option 1: Wait and hope. This is what most people do. You tell yourself the investigation is probly focused on bigger targets. You hope your name never comes up. Maybe it works out. But if it dosent – if that knock comes three years from now – youll have wasted years you could have spent preparing. You wont have thought through your defense. You wont have organized documents. Youll be scrambling at the worst possible moment.

Option 2: Voluntary disclosure. In some cases, coming forward before your contacted can result in more favorable treatment. The DOJ has shown willingness to credit cooperation, including self-disclosure. The Sentencing Guidelines specificaly allow for reductions when defendants accept responsibility early. But this is risky. Your essentialy confessing to conduct the government might never have discovered. What if your application wasnt actualy fraudulent? What if the issues were minor? Coming forward could create problems that wouldnt have existed otherwise. This requires careful strategic thinking with experienced counsel.

Option 3: Get counsel now and prepare. Even if you dont do anything proactive, having a lawyer review your situation means youll be ready if something happens. Youll know what your exposure looks like. Youll have thought through responses. You wont be making panic decisions at 6am when agents are at your door. A good federal defense attorney can look at your PPP application, compare it to your actual business records, and tell you honestly what your facing. Maybe its nothing. Maybe there are explanations. Maybe you need to start organizing documents now.

Heres what preparation actualy looks like. You gather all the documents related to your PPP application – the application itself, the payroll records you submitted, your actual bank statements from 2019 and 2020, your tax returns, any communications with accountants or preparers. You review what you actualy said versus what was actualy true. You identify discrepancies. You think through explanations for those discrepancies. You consider whether those explanations will hold up under questioning.

If the worst happens and agents show up, you already know what to say: “I’m invoking my right to remain silent and I want to speak with my attorney.” You already have an attorney who knows your situation. You already have documents organized. Your not scrambling.

At Spodek Law Group, we handle federal criminal defense matters across the country, including the Western District of Oklahoma. The consultation is protected by attorney-client privelege – nothing you tell us can be used against you. That means you can be completely honest about what happened without fear that your words will end up in a prosecutor’s file.

Why the Silence Ends When It Ends

Congress extended the statute of limitations for PPP fraud to ten years. That means a loan application submitted in April 2020 can be prosecuted until April 2030. The government has five more years to come after 2020 applications. Six more years for 2021 applications. The clock isnt running out – its barely halfway done.

The Western District Task Force isnt shutting down. The DOJ has charged over 3,500 defendants nationaly, seized more than $1.4 billion in stolen funds, and filed over 400 civil lawsuits. Their still working. Their still building cases. The next indictment in Oklahoma City could already be drafted. It could have your name on it.

Federal sentences are not like state sentences. There is no parole in the federal system. If you get 24 months like Brian Foster, you serve at least 85% of that time. Good behavior might shave off a few months, but your not getting out in half the time like some state systems allow. When the judge says 24 months, you serve 20 months minimum. When the judge says 60 months, you serve 51 months. The time is real.

And after you serve your sentence, the consequences continue. Professional licenses get revoked. Certain jobs become unavailable. Travel to other countries becomes complicated or impossible. A federal fraud conviction follows you on every background check, every job application, every professional oppertunity for the rest of your life. Thats what Madinah Montgomery is facing when she gets out. Thats what Russell Kim is facing when his sentence finally ends.

The silence youve been hearing isnt protection. Its just the part of the process where they havent finished yet.

If your facing potential PPP fraud exposure in Oklahoma City or anywhere in Oklahoma, the time to talk to a lawyer is now. Not after the FBI shows up. Not after you recieve a target letter. While you still have options. While the decisions you make can actualy affect the outcome.

Call 212-300-5196 for a confidential consultation. The quiet in Oklahoma City ends when it ends – and you dont get to choose when.