The previous proprietor of a cupcake bakery in Columbus, Ohio, was sentenced to 6 years in jail after she admitted to stealing the identification of a useless child and $1.5 million in PPP loans.
Ava Misseldine, 50, pled responsible to 16 counts of passport and wire fraud in a federal court docket final October and was sentenced on Aug. 8.
In line with the Division of Justice, Misseldine used the identification of Brie Bourgeois, an toddler who handed away in 1979, to acquire an Ohio driver’s license and social safety card again in 2003. She additionally used the useless youngster’s identify to use for a scholar pilot certificates and U.S. Passport for her job as a flight attendant for JetSelect in 2007. She used her identify and Bourgeois for the subsequent 13 years.
In 2020, Misseldine used each identities to use for PPP loans for her companies Sugar Inc. Cupcakes & Tea Salon and Koko Tea Salon & Bakery. She obtained $1.5 million and used the funds to buy a house in Michigan for $327,500 in addition to one in Utah for $647,500.
Misseldine relocated to Utah in 2021 and utilized for driver’s licenses in her identify and Bourgeois. She was caught after she tried to resume her fraudulent passport in 2021, and it was flagged, prompting an investigation.
The Columbus Dispatch famous that the previous cupcake baker obtained greater than a dozen PPP loans by utilizing solid paperwork to say she had a minimal of 10 bakeries, eating places and catering corporations that had been both not in enterprise for years or by no means existed.
Misseldine was arrested by the authorities in Utah in June of 2022. Authorities additionally discovered that she had six prior convictions that dated again to 1991. Two of them had been below the identify of the deceased youngster, in response to Dayton Information Now.
“Chillingly, a toddler who died in infancy now has a prison file due to the defendant’s conduct,” learn one court docket doc.
Misseldine agreed to pay restitution within the quantity of $1.5 million and can forfeit her home in Utah. Her home in Michigan was bought, and the funds had been used as a part of her restitution.
Misseldine’s lawyer, Alan Pfeuffer, stated that his shopper was remorseful in a press release to The New York Occasions.
“Ava was very remorseful over her previous prison habits, and, at sentencing she learn a really emotional assertion accepting accountability for her actions,” stated Pfeuffer, including that she “plans to hunt counseling whereas in jail.”
