Indian-American techie Mukund Mohan arrested for $5.5 mn fraud

Washington: Mukund Mohan, a computer science graduate and former director at Microsoft turned who turned into an entrepreneur got arrested for fraudulently applying for more than $5.5 million in coronavirus relief fund. He have been accused of moving the sum into his personal Robinhood brokerage account.

Mukund Mohan applied for eight loans to six companies under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a federal stimulus designed to encourage small businesses to keep workers employed during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Mohan, a technology executive in the Seattle area currently serves as chief technology officer at BuildDirect.com Technologies Inc., a website that connects people with home contractors. According to Mohan’s LinkedIn profile, he has served Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

The federal loan documents contained a multitude of falsehoods, prosecutors said. According to the indictment, Mohan said one of his companies paid more than $2.3 million for payroll in 2019 and that the company had dozens of employees. According to the US Attorney in Washington, Mohan acquired ownership of the company in May, and it had no employees.

Robinhood Markets Inc. provided records showing an account belonging to Mohan transferred about $231,000 of the federal money to the stock-trading app, prosecutors said.