A Florida pastor and his son were arrested on Wednesday over criming around during the Covid pandemic while grifting off of the misfortunes of others. The little "Christian" fellers are accused of fraudulently obtaining more than $8 million in federal Covid relief funds and attempting to use some of the money to buy a luxury home near Walt Disney World.
Sure, doesn't everyone need a luxury home while people are dying around them and whatnot as the disease continued to spread across the U.S?
Evan Edwards and his son, Josh, 30, were taken into custody five months after an NBC News report raised questions over why they hadn't been charged in the alleged scam, which federal prosecutors first identified in court papers in December 2020.
What an outstanding example of Christians:
The case dates back to April 2020 when Josh Edwards applied for a $6 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan to cover payroll, rent and utilities for his family's ministry. In the loan application, he claimed that the organization, ASLAN International Ministry, had 486 employees and a monthly payroll of $2.7 million, according to a federal forfeiture complaint.
ASLAN International was ultimately approved for an $8.4 million loan.
But when federal investigators showed up at the ministry's office in Orlando, the door was locked and workers at the neighboring businesses told them nobody was ever seen inside, the complaint says. A review of the ministry's website found that the donation links were inactive and sections of text were apparently lifted from other religious sites, according to the complaint.
Another thing that should have raised a red flag is that a man listed on the loan application as the ministry's accountant suffered from dementia and hadn't done any work for the organization since 2017.
Ooof! That's definitely a tell.
A six-count indictment unsealed Wednesday accuses the Christian miscreants of making false claims in their PPP loan application, including that ASLAN International had 486 employees and average monthly payroll expenses of $2.7 million. That number was enhanced and should have been far lower.
