An Illinois businessman was sentenced yesterday to six years in prison and two years of supervised release for his role in schemes to fraudulently obtain over $55 million in commercial loans and lines of credit, as well as for submitting fraudulent applications to obtain COVID-19 relief money guaranteed by the U.S. Small Business Administration through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Rahul Shah, 56, of Evanston, the owner and operator of several information-technology companies in the Chicago area, fraudulently obtained funds from loans and lines of credit for which he was not eligible from federally insured financial institutions and later defaulted on at least one such line of credit and one such loan.
He was also ordered to pay $ 23,226,005 in restitution.
“The defendant orchestrated a massive scheme to fraudulently obtain over $55 million in commercial loans and lines of credit from federally insured financial institutions and exploit the Paycheck Protection Program,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Criminal Division. “The defendant’s lies and deceit put our financial system at risk and wasted limited resources. The Criminal Division remains dedicated to prosecuting fraudsters who steal from our important institutions and taxpayer-assistance programs.”
Shah submitted to federally insured financial institutions falsified bank statements that fraudulently inflated deposits, falsified balance sheets that overstated revenues, and fabricated audited financial statements with forged signatures. Shah also engaged in monetary transactions with proceeds from the bank fraud.
“The duration, brazenness, and magnitude of this fraud scheme speak to the defendant’s determination and greed,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros for the Northern District of Illinois. “The fact that such a sophisticated scheme was uncovered and successfully prosecuted is a testament to the diligent work of our prosecutors and federal law enforcement agents. Our Office was proud to partner with the Department of Justice Fraud Section on this case and many others that hold defendants accountable and provide justice for defrauded victims.”
In addition, Shah submitted an application to a federally insured bank for a $441,138 SBA-guaranteed loan, which significantly overstated the payroll expenses of a company he controlled. In support of the loan application, he submitted several fraudulent IRS documents to the lender, falsely representing that the company had made payments to multiple individuals who had not received them. He also used stolen identities in PPP loan applications to commit the fraud, listing the names and taxpayer identification numbers of individuals he knew had not received payments from the company.
Shah signed and caused to be submitted to the lender what purported to be IRS Forms 941 for his company’s 2019 quarterly payroll expenses. A comparison between the documents submitted to the lender and the company’s IRS and state tax filings revealed that Shah’s company reported significantly lower payroll expenses to the tax authorities.
In July 2025, Shah was convicted of seven counts of bank fraud, five counts of making false statements to a financial institution, two counts of money laundering, and two counts of aggravated identity theft.
The FBI and Small Business Association Office of Inspector General investigated the case.
Assistant Chief Patrick Mott and Trial Attorney Lindsey Carson of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section prosecuted the case with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.
The Fraud Section leads the Criminal Division’s prosecution of fraud schemes that exploit the PPP. Since the enactment of the CARES Act, the Fraud Section has prosecuted over 200 defendants in more than 130 criminal cases and has seized over $78 million in cash proceeds derived from fraudulently obtained PPP funds, as well as numerous real estate properties and luxury items purchased with such proceeds.
Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Justice Department’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
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