Two Israelis were sentenced to spend several years in US prisons for separate fraud cases involving millions of dollars.
Daniel Dadoun, 49, was sentenced Tuesday to 41 months in prison for fraudulently obtaining $3.2 million in federal aid during the COVID-19 epidemic for his New Jersey businesses.
Meanwhile, Hava Yfrah-Austin, 58, was sentenced Monday to 51 months in prison for defrauding at least $10 million from two Miami companies where she was employed as an accountant.
Both defendants pleaded guilty to the charges against them.
Dadoun owns several businesses in New Jersey that he used to apply for participation in the Paycheck Protection Program, according to a Wednesday statement from the local district attorney’s office. The PPP was a federal program established during the COVID-19 pandemic that enabled small businesses impacted by lockdowns and economic hardships to obtain forgivable loans to pay wages and other expenses, such as utilities or rent.
According to court documents, from April 2020 through August 2022, Dadoun illegally obtained $3.2 million in PPP loans by submitting false and fraudulent loan applications.
Dadoun then sought to keep the cash by following up with “false and fraudulent PPP loan forgiveness applications that misrepresented payroll expenses and the number of employees working at his companies,” the statement said.
To back up his claims, Dadoun filed falsified tax documents and altered bank statements, the statement said.
On one occasion in April 2020, Dadoun claimed to be employing 400 people when in fact he had fewer than 100 workers. He also said he was paying out $850,000 a month in wages, enabling him to receive loans of over $2.1 million, the Ynet outlet reported.
He then transferred that money to the account of another company he owned.
Dadoun, now of Israel but formerly of South Plainfield, pleaded guilty in April to bank fraud and money laundering.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Robert Kirsch sentenced Dadoun to three years’ supervised release and ordered restitution of $3,239,773.
Some of the money Dadoun received was deposited in accounts abroad, including Canada and Vietnam, which can be forfeited to US authorities.
It was not clear from the district attorney’s statement or Hebrew media reports if Dadoun was convicted in absentia or where he would serve out his time.
A day earlier, Hava Yfrah-Austin, 58, of Hallandale Beach, was sentenced to 51 months in prison after admitting to a $10 million fraud scheme.
She was arrested in April at Miami Airport as she was about to board a plane to Israel, four months after having sold all her assets in Florida.
According to prosecutors, Yfrah-Austin ran a company called Accounting Solutions Today. In 2001, she became the accountant for two Miami-area companies, where she had the authority to sign off on expenses.
Prosecutors said that between 2018 and 2024 she swindled at least $10 million from the companies.
Court papers said she would use fictitious supplier names to transfer money between the two companies where she was employed. She would then transfer the money to her personal account. Because she was funneling the transfers through a bank in Alabama, her crimes were considered a federal offense, Ynet reported.
The scam was discovered when the owner of one company found that many companies in the accounting records were illegitimate.
Prosecutors said that at first she admitted to stealing just $170,000, then a further $3 million, but records showed the actual amount was higher.
She was fired in April 2024, after which she sold all her assets in December of that year. The following April, she bought a one-way ticket to Israel, but was stopped at the airport and arrested.
Yfrah-Austin was ordered to pay $9.2 million in damages and be placed under supervised release for three years after she exits prison.