Employer steals wages from third-party employees and claims fraudulent COVID-19 benefits

NORFOLK, Va. (WABY) – A New York man who overspent his employees’ wages and claimed false COVID-19 relief has been found guilty by a Norfolk jury of wire fraud and mail fraud. It’s in the text.

Derrickson Lawrence, 67, was the owner of MarketView Resources, Inc., a company that provided third-party payroll services. The company’s primary customer was a Virginia Beach company that owned restaurant franchises in the mid-Atlantic region.

The restaurant employees’ salaries were transferred from the Virginia Beach business to a bank account and Lawrence’s company was responsible for paying them, according to the release. However, between March 2017 and October 2019, Lawrence transferred approximately $230,000 from his bank account to a brokerage account, along with employee salaries. He then lost most of his money in a dodgy trade.

Lawrence also used his restaurant employee wages to pay for debit cards he gave to himself, his employees, and his family. As of December 2018, the bank did not have sufficient balances to cover the employee’s debit card usage, according to the release. This means that employees will see a higher available balance than what is actually in the bank.

The financial services firm that processed these transactions for MarketView covered nearly $90,000 before ending its relationship with Lawrence in September 2019. When the card was closed on September 25, 2019, MarketView’s own records show the cardholder’s available balance exceeded his $20,000. It was $465,000, but only $2,400 was in the bank account, the release states.

Lawrence also defrauded the COVID-19 relief program known as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The program was intended to provide loans to certain small businesses and nonprofit organizations during the pandemic.

In April 2020, Lawrence submitted a false PPP loan application stating that he had two employees and paid them more than $10,000 a month. Lawrence misrepresented Marketview’s 2020 payroll using altered bank statements that actually reflected activity from February 2016. Lawrence received a $26,250 PPP loan and used it to trade options.

When sentenced on July 19, Lawrence could be sentenced to 20 years in prison on each of the 11 charges.