A high-paid Washington state tech executive was sentenced Tuesday to two years behind bars for illegally obtaining about $1.8 million in federal COVID-19 relief loans, federal authorities said.
Mukund Mohan was busted for the scheme in July 2020 as he was raking in an annual salary of $200,000 as chief of technology for Canadian e-commerce company BuildDirect, according to a Department of Justice press release.
Mohan, who had past gigs at Microsoft and Amazon, falsified employment documents in order to fraudulently receive the loans through the government’s Paycheck Protection Program for companies that he purportedly ran, authorities said.
On the altered documents, Mohan said one of his companies employed dozens of employees, but in actuality it had none.
Mohan had no criminal history before this conviction, and his lawyers said he fainted when federal agents knocked on his door.
The tech executive’s attorneys requested a lighter sentence, noting he had only spent $16,500 of the illegally obtained dough.
Mohan paid back the amount he spent, the remaining money was seized by the feds and he was also slapped with a $100,000 fine.
With Post wires