Fraud Convict Obtains COVID-19 Loan While Awaiting Prison

She reportedly blew $75,000 on travel, shopping and legal bills.

About three years ago, Scott Kennedy was working as a top financial executive at Nemera in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. The French company designs and manufactures drug delivery products.

Kennedy got in hot water with both the company and the feds when he and his former escort-turned-girlfriend racked up nearly $5.8 million dollars in fraudulent charges on his company credit card. The charges included $12,000 per month that his girlfriend Crystal Lundberg used to rent a 7,000-square-foot home. He was fired, and both Kennedy and Lundberg were prosecuted. 

Kennedy pleaded guilty and received more than two years in prison. He's currently serving his sentence at a low-security prison in Texas  

In Dec. 2019, a federal judge sentenced Lundberg to more than four years in prison, but she has been able to delay her surrender, which now stands at Dec. 31, 2020. She was originally supposed to report in January, and Lundberg hasn't wasted a second of her freedom. Let's just say she has an incredible entrepreneurial spirit. 

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the 34-year-old fraudulently obtained a $150,000 COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan from the Small Business Administration — and spent it on everything from travel and electronics to her own legal bills. 

She twice applied for loans using a beauty salon business. While a felony conviction within the past five years should automatically disqualify an applicant from the program, Lundberg skated by on half-truths and lies. Her first application would've gone through had she not failed to show economic hardship. In her second application, which went through, she admitted to having a criminal history, but told the loan officer about a different criminal case that had been dismissed. She was approved for a $150,000 loan, and in 25 days, she spent about $75,000 of it on travel, various hotels, at the Mall of America, and paid more than $13,000 to law firms. 

She didn't even learn from her previous conviction. In the Nemera fraud case, prosecutors used photos of her lavish spending posted to social media against her. This time, federal agents once again pulled posts from Facebook, including when Lundberg posted things like, “I hate living within limits!!” and “I run it up [until] the feds come.”

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