Former St. Louis Rams player Dana Howard and his business associates were recently charged with PPP loan fraud involving a trucking company and a construction company. (Photo credit: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)
A former NFL player and his business partner, who co-owned a construction company and a trucking company, and their accountant are facing fraud charges after prosecutors allege they were involved in an elaborate scheme to obtain $1.4 million through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
On Monday, a federal grand jury indicted Dana C. Howard, 52, of O’Fallon, Illinois, on nine counts, including bank fraud, bankruptcy fraud, failure to pay taxes, making a false statement and conspiracy. Howard, who was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys in 1995 and released and signed by the St. Louis Rams later that year. In 1996, he was signed to play for the Chicago Bears before being injured. He was an All-American linebacker for the University of Illinois.
In the 21-page indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Howard’s business partner, Richard Scott Myers, 63, of Edwardsville, Illinois, was charged with eight counts, including one count of money laundering. Sunnquist, 53, of Swansea, Illinois, was charged with three counts of fraud and conspiracy.
According to the indictment, Howard and Myers owned a construction company, Zoie LLC, and a trucking company, Zade Trucking, both located in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Prosecutors allege that Howard and Myers applied for and obtained a $1.43 million loan from Saint Louis Bank through the PPP, administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration, in April 2020 to help businesses struggling during the COVID pandemic . The pair claimed that more than $1.3 million of the money would be used to keep their construction company, Zoie, afloat.
However, prosecutors allege that Howard and Myers used most of the money intended to allow Zoie to operate for their own use and to pay off nearly $430,000 in debt for their other company, Zade Trucking. Myers used $250,000 to buy a house, according to the indictment.
Court documents allege the business partners used cashier’s checks and wire transfers to transfer funds intended for the construction company through three banks in St. Louis, Edwardsville and Champaign, Illinois, and wrote themselves checks for $500,000 each from the Zoie account, which they mentioned. as “wage funds” in the memo line.
Howard and Myers also filed for personal bankruptcy in the U.S. Southern District of Illinois in 2020, but failed to disclose the PPP funds funneled into their personal accounts, according to the indictment.
Myers’ bankruptcy petition, which he filed in June 2020, stated that he had “no checks or other negotiable instruments,” even though he kept $200,000 in checks from the Zoie PPP loan and did not disclose that he had a home purchased with the money, according to the indictment. He also allegedly used a check from the Zoie account for $100,000 to deposit into the AAA Rentals business account, which Myers’ current wife owned.
In December 2020, Howard also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but failed to mention in his statement of financial affairs that he still owned $350,000 in checks from the Zoie PPP loan account, according to court documents.
On January 11, 2021, Howard and Myers applied for a second PPP loan for nearly $1.43 million, and both answered “no” when asked if either was involved in bankruptcy proceedings. Later that month, the couple filed for forgiveness of their first PPP loan while still holding “at least $400,000 worth of checks made out to them personally. [and] stated that they used all loan proceeds for eligible expenses, including payroll costs that amounted to at least 60% of the total loan amount,” the indictment said.
In their request for loan forgiveness, Howard and Myers claimed they spent more than $860,300 in payroll costs and nearly $556,000 in rent or lease payments, according to the court.
Sunnquist, the bookkeeper for both companies, is accused of falsifying Zoie’s expense records and manipulating old invoices to support the loan forgiveness application. In September 2022, SBA denied loan forgiveness.
In September 2021, federal prosecutors allege that Sunnquist sent a Saint Louis Bank loan officer a spreadsheet of falsified expenses for Zoie, containing claims of false payments for heavy equipment rentals from St. Louis-based Treloar Enterprises at a time when the company’s owner was in federal prison. Sunnquist later requested invoices from a previous contract with Geo-Cell, which he allegedly falsified to be used to support the revised forgiveness request, court documents show.
After the bank raised concerns about the initial forgiveness application, the complaint alleges, Howard filed a revised PPP loan forgiveness application later that month, which included payroll costs of nearly $1.3 million and rent or lease payments of more than $159,000 were claimed. Prosecutors allege that the revised filing claimed rental payments of nearly $970,000 for “Geo-Cell Payroll” and other rental lease payments of $550,000. At that time, Howard and Myers disclosed that they had received $95,000 and $90,000, respectively, from the PPP loan, but later revised their income to $20,833 each after the bank informed them that their income should be capped at that amount.
Court records show the three have not yet appeared in court on the charges after federal prosecutors moved to quash the arrest warrants for Howard, Myers and Sunnquist.
Howard’s arraignment is scheduled for Dec. 11 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark A. Beatty. “The FBI has opened thousands of investigations nationwide targeting COVID-related fraud and is working closely with our partners to hold thieves accountable,” FBI Springfield Special Agent in Charge Christopher Johnson said in a statement.
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