Former professional basketball player sentenced for pandemic loan fraud

 

Date: Jan. 27, 2025 

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

ST. LOUIS — U.S. District Judge Rodney W. Sippel on Monday sentenced a former professional basketball player to five years of probation, 200 hours of community service and $308,354 in restitution for pandemic loan fraud.

Lorenzo Gordon fraudulently applied for two loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and three from the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Program in 2020. Both programs were intended to help businesses and their employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gordon fraudulently applied for loans in the name of three companies: Logo Fitness LLC, Elite 50 Basketball Training LLC and Elite Health and Fitness Company LLC. Gordon received $107,074 in PPP loans and $165,700 in EIDL loans and advances. The restitution total includes fees and interest.

Gordon “took advantage of these programs for his personal gain despite suffering no such economic injury,” harming “those who truly needed those funds,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane Klocke wrote in a sentencing memo.

Gordon pleaded guilty in September in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to one felony count of theft of government money.

The Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) and the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane Klocke prosecuted the case.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.