Mukund Mohan, the chief technology officer of BuildDirect, has been charged with fraudulently applying for more than $5.5 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans and laundering a portion of the money into a personal brokerage account, Bloomberg reports.
The PPP applications and alleged fraud were unrelated to BuildDirect, which is based in Vancouver, Canada.
“We became aware of the U.S. Department of Justice complaint against Mukund Mohan by news reports of his alleged activities connected to the Paycheck Protection Program. As a Canadian company, BuildDirect is not eligible for PPP funds,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to WFB. “The DOJ does not name BuildDirect as one of the companies involved in Mr. Mohan’s alleged scheme, nor did any of Mr. Mohan’s alleged activities involve BuildDirect in any way whatsoever. BuildDirect remains fully open for business, with no interruption to our supply chain, delivery network, site offering or customer service.”
Mohan is based in suburban Seattle, according to Business in Vancouver. Mohan allegedly applied for eight PPP loans through six companies, and the applications are alleged to contain a number of falsehoods. One application stated one of Mohan’s companies paid more than $2.3 million for payroll in 2019; however, Mohan had only acquired ownership of the company in May, and it had no employees, according to the Bloomberg report.
Records also showed that Mohan transferred approximately $231,000 of the federal money into a personal brokerage account.
Mohan was hired as CTO of BuildDirect in 2018.
