Former Miami-Dade cop gets prison time for COVID loan fraud

An ex-Miami-Dade police officer who revived a dormant company to use in a COVID-19 relief loan scam was sentenced to federal prison and ordered to pay back $285,479.

Samuel Harris Jr., 43, was sentenced Monday to four months in prison, followed by four months of home detention, after he pleaded guilty in June to a count of wire fraud. He had been with the department for nearly five years when he resigned weeks before he was charged.

In June 2020, shortly after the pandemic began and when U.S. hospitals were struggling to handle the large influx of COVID patients prior to a vaccine, Harris reinstated Oregen Digital Inc., a company that he had incorporated about five years before, records show. According to investigators, he also opened a bank account in the name of Oregen, with him as the sole signatory.

On June 29, Harris applied for a fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loan, falsely claiming on an Internal Revenue Service form that Oregen had 10 employees and a monthly payroll of over $50,000. As a result, he obtained a $125,579 PPP loan from a Georgiabased lender.

But his criminal activities didn’t stop there, investigators said.

On June 30, Harris submitted a fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster

Loan application to the U.S. Small Business Administration, falsely claiming Oregen had 10 employees and a gross revenue of over $859,000 in 12 months. As a result, he received an EIDL loan of $149,000 and a $10,000 advance, which didn’t have to be repaid.

“It infuriates me to learn that one of my officers was arrested for fraud,” then-Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez III said at the time. “The action of this officer not only violated the trust of the community, but took advantage of a system that was in place to help businesses in need due to COVID-19.”