US Man Jailed for Using COVID Funds for Alpaca Farm
A radio host from the US has been sentenced to two years in prison for using pandemic relief funds to buy a farm and eight alpacas.
Dana McIntyre, who hosts a cryptocurrency show, also used the money to fund his podcast and buy a vintage vehicle.
He was convicted of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of government money that was meant for business owners who had fallen on hard times during the coronavirus pandemic.
McIntyre, who is 59, was the owner of a pizza restaurant near Boston. But in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, he used the names of his children to apply for two loans for businesses that did not exist.
He then applied for unemployment benefits, falsely saying that "he was not working or receiving income as a result of the pandemic," according to The New York Times.
He also submitted a fraudulent application for more than $660,000 in low-interest loans from the US Paycheck Protection Program, which was designed to help businesses to pay staff.
McIntyre said he had 47 employees when he only had a few.
He continued to receive the money after selling his pizza business in September 2020.
After he was convicted, McIntyre told The New York Times: "It was a pandemic and I panicked."
But the FBI said he "capitalized on a national catastrophe."
The acting US attorney for Massachusetts, Joshua S. Levy, said: "He stole from the American taxpayers and the many small businesses which truly needed those loans to survive."
After buying the alpacas and a farm in Vermont, McIntyre went on to open it to the public as an alpaca farm where visitors could walk with and feed the animals. The farmhouse was listed on Airbnb.
He also spent $6,500 on his cryptocurrency podcast and bought a vintage pickup truck.
The New York Times wrote that McIntyre was one of more than 3,100 Americans charged with pandemic relief fraud by the end of August 2023.
