Michael Capps, a former Republican state legislator in Kansas, was found guilty by a jury of a dozen criminal charges after deceptively obtaining COVID-19 relief funds from state and federal authorities for three business entities.
The funds he deceptively and illegally obtained totaled $355,550. Capps admitted during trial that he included two young daughters of a business partner of his on an application for federal money available under the Paycheck Protection Program, listing the two as employees, although they, well, weren’t. Capps alleged to the federal Small Business Administration that Krivacy, another claimed business entity of his, had 18 employees and revenue reaching nearly three-quarters of a million dollars, although prosecutors alleged there were actually no employees legitimately under the firm. Capps admitted 17 of those he claimed were contractors; the other was himself. A similarly large gap between what Capps reported and the claimed reality was seen in numbers for an entity called the Fourth and Long Foundation, which he claimed had a dozen on staff. All but one were staffers elsewhere at a different nonprofit org.
The twelfth individual was again himself. Capps complained during trial that federal investigators supposedly didn’t conduct an appropriately comprehensive examination, but he had an opportunity to provide these potentially exonerating records from payment services he named, and he didn’t do so. An FBI agent discussed a subpoena authorities issued demanding all records that would show business income and payments to employees. Capps also alleged during trial that an employee at Emprise Bank instructed him to list what were false figures in making some of these contested claims. His lawyer shared emails in which no such instructions were present, a gap to which Capps replied by claiming the instructions were over the phone.
In a Paycheck Protection Program application associated with a third entity, Midwest Business Group, Capps used figures for payroll that were based on claimed expectations for the upcoming year — rather than actual numbers from 2019. Federal investigators concluded Midwest Business Group also had actually nobody on staff.
The charges of which Capps was found guilty include money laundering for transfers he made of some of the fraudulently obtained relief money. He isn’t even the only current or former Republican state legislator currently facing accusations of deceptively seeking relief money for businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Florida, Rep. Joe Harding — who has since resigned — was charged with similar offenses after he sought funds for two businesses that allegedly were already defunct when pursuing relief — although he claimed hundreds of thousands in income and multiple employees at each. He also used falsified bank statements headed with the name of at least one of the defunct entities in making his applications, according to federal info. He helped lead the “Don’t Say Gay” bill Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis signed this year.
