Washington based Indian-origin techie gets two years for $1.8 million COVID-19 loan fraud

An Indian-origin techie has pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and money laundering, landing a two-year jail sentence for his offense.

48-year-old Mukund Mohan was pulled up after he illegally obtained nearly $1.8 million in COVID-19 disaster relief loans. A resident of Clyde Hill in Washington, Mohan has previously worked at Microsoft and Amazon.

He is reported to have falsified employment documents to receive millions of dollars in loans through the American government's Paycheck Protection Programme for companies that he claimed to be running, by attaching fake federal tax filings and altered incorporation documents.


The techie claimed that his company, Mahenjo Inc, had dozens of employees in need of pay and applied for loans that would go towards employee wages and payroll taxes. In reality, when he purchased the company, it had no employees and no business activity.

Mohan was arrested in July 2020 and plead guilty on March 15, this year; he applied for over $5 million in loans - through eight fake loan applications - before he was caught. He was sentenced on August 24. He has been ordered to pay a $1,00,000 fine and $17,86,357 in restitution

With inputs from PTI.