Police: Woman used pandemic-relief loan to pay off a hit man
The Paycheck Protection Program is intended to help businesses meet their payroll during the pandemic, but scores of people have faced charges that they used the federal loan money on extravagances like Ferraris, Lamborghinis, jewelry and lavish vacations.
Now the authorities in Miami say a woman there went to another extreme: using part of a $15,000 PPP loan to pay a hit man.
The woman, Jasmine Martinez, 33, received the loan on April 20, 2021, two weeks before a man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt shot Le'Shonte Jones to death as she walked to her apartment building with her 3-year-old daughter, the Miami-Dade police said in an arrest warrant dated Feb. 9. Martinez made withdrawals from her bank account totaling more than $10,000 in the days before the killing, the police said.
Police arrested Martinez and Romiel Robinson, a man Martinez was in a romantic relationship with, on charges of firstdegree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the killing of Jones, 24, a Transportation Security Administration employee at Miami International Airport, according to arrest warrants in the case. The Miami Herald reported on the warrants on Tuesday.
Miami-Dade police last week also announced the arrest of Javon Carter, an ex-convict who they believe to be the hit man. Carter was charged with first-degree murder and the attempted murder of Jones' daughter, who was grazed by bullets in the attack, police said.
Police found a video on Carter's cellphone, taken about two hours after Jones' killing, in which he was counting a “large sum” of money and saying, “just another day in the office,” according to an arrest warrant.
The police believe the shooting was the culmination of a long antagonism between the two women.
Fallon Zirpoli, a lawyer representing Martinez, said in a statement on Tuesday night that Martinez “has always denied any involvement in this tragedy since the first time law enforcement approached her last summer.”
Jonathan Jordan, a lawyer representing Robinson, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. It was unclear whether Carter had a lawyer.