A former Broward County Deputy Sheriff, Stephanie Diane Smith, was sentenced last week to 7 months in prison for participating in a COVID-19 relief fraud scheme in which she received two loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
In March 2024, a federal jury in Fort Lauderdale found Smith guilty of two counts of wire fraud in connection with the scheme.
In 2021, the 54-year-old law enforcement officer from Sunrise, Florida, applied for and received two PPP loans as a sole proprietor for Children 1st Basketball Training and Agape Smith Vending. She used materially false information about each business’s 2019 gross income and submitted falsified IRS tax forms with each application.
Smith also sought and received forgiveness for both fraudulently obtained PPP loans, which totaled over $31,000 in principal and interest. During the period of the scheme, Smith was employed as a deputy sheriff in BSO’s Department of Law Enforcement.
U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn imposed the sentence following a hearing. The sentence includes a 3-year term of supervised release following imprisonment, restitution in the amount of $31,108, a $2,000 fine, and forfeiture.
More Broward officers charged with fraud
Smith was part of over a dozen employees at the Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO) who were last year charged with fraudulently obtaining Paycheck Protection Program loans.
At a press conference on Thursday with Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony in October, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Markenzy Lapointe said that a total of 17 employees, all of whom are “sworn BSO deputies,” were charged with fraud.
The employees collectively received around $500,000, which they diverted for their own personal use.
For his part, the Broward Sheriff said he was disappointed in the officers.
“I hate to see that, knowing some of the individuals and seeing the names on that list as being indicted, some of them were good officers,” Tony said. “But you’re only as good as the last act and conduct that you execute, and so if you’re gonna be participating in criminal activities, we don’t want you in this profession.”
The investigation went back as far as 2021. The sheriff said he had also instructed the office’s corruption unit to investigate all 5,500 BSO employees “to ensure that we would not leave one stone unturned.”
The sheriff said the office has worked too hard to allow “one or two individuals” to destroy the public trust that the office has built within the community.
He also urged BSO employees to continue to report instances of crime and wrongdoing within the organization to protect the BSO’s reputation and values. “If you see something, I expect you to say something … if there’s any other type of corruption or misconduct from any colleague within this place,” he said.
Read more: Over a dozen BSO employees charged with fraud over PPP loans
