OXFORD – A former West Point Police Department detective was arrested earlier this month, accused of stealing $200,000 in pandemic relief funds as part of a scheme to defraud the federal government of more than $11.2 million.
Ramirez M. Ivy was the lead investigator in West Point, serving with the department for a decade before moving to the 16th Circuit District Attorney’s Office in February. He resigned two weeks ago.
He was one of 11 people named in the indictment filed June 21 in United States District Court for North Mississippi in Oxford.
The defendants are each charged with a single count of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud with a trial date of Sept. 5. If convicted, each defendant could face up to 60 years in prison and up to a $2 million fine.
Ivy was arraigned July 10, given a federal public defender and released on an unsecured $10,000 bond.
Ivy and the others allegedly conspired with a Small Business Administration employee in Holly Springs to submit fraudulent applications for Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), which were intended to help small businesses recover from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The defendants then paid the SBA employee and a cohort a percentage of the loan when approved.
According to the indictment, Ivy submitted an EIDL application on Aug. 8, 2021. It was initially denied, but Ivy then submitted additional documentation, including a fraudulent 2019 tax return that “grossly overstated his actual business income.” He was issued $200,000 in EIDL funds in February 2022 and later sent $45,000 to Lakeith Faulkner and Norman Beckwood, the masterminds behind the scheme.
Faulkner used his position at the SBA to orchestrate the submission of $11,249,800 in fraudulent EIDL applications. In exchange, Faulkner and Beckwood received more than $2.3 million in kickbacks.
Law enforcement officials say the 11 defendants in this indictment received a total of $2.13 million in loan money and paid Faulkner and Beckwood almost $500,000.
Faulkner and Beckwood have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Faulkner was sentenced in May to serve five years in federal prison and ordered to pay $10,620,452.26 in restitution to the SBA. Beckwood is scheduled to be sentenced next month.
Most of the 11 defendants in this indictment are from north Mississippi. One comes from the south part of the state, one is from Georgia and two are from west Tennessee. This is actually the second group of around 10 conspirators to be indicted.
Authorities are continuing to investigate the massive fraud case and expect more indictments to be handed down in the future.
This article was republished under a content sharing agreement between The Dispatch and the Daily Journal.
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