A Scott businessman who bilked the government out of nearly $4 million in COVID-19 relief funds, tried to do it again while out on bond and then forged character letters praising himself to present to a judge will spend 6.5 years in federal prison, the judge ruled Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge W. Scott Hardy chastised Randy Frasinelli, 66, before he issued the sentence, which will be followed by five years of supervised release. He said Frasinelli’s forged letters had eroded the court’s trust in him.
Frasinelli pleaded guilty in August to bank fraud and money laundering, about a year after he was indicted following an FBI and IRS investigation for filing for and receiving millions in pandemic funds to prop up fake businesses.
All told, he’d filed six phony loan applications under the Paycheck Protection Program, which netted him around $3.8 million. On the applications, he purported he owned several small businesses and needed help to cover salaries and other expenses as the pandemic raged. Investigators, though, found no offices and no employees.
Instead, investigators said, he bought cars and art, food and wine, guns and precious metals, and a Mexican villa. Then, while he was out on bond for the initial charges, he applied for another bogus loan worth $525,000.
Frasinelli, as part of his plea, took responsibility for his actions. That acceptance of responsibility lowered the sentencing range with which Judge Hardy had to work.
As part of the post-sentencing report sent to the judge, Frasinelli included letters from his children and other family members, along with 14 from other non-family members praising him as a businessman and person. The letters were signed by politicians and business leaders.
In a filing last week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote they’d discovered at least 13 of the 14 letters from non-family members were forgeries. Attorneys said Frasinelli’s forged letters should negate any special considerations in relation to his sentencing.
“First, Frasinelli should lose all credit for the acceptance of responsibility,” attorneys for the government wrote, noting that they’d agreed to recommend a lesser sentence but “also reserved the right to withdraw that recommendation in the event that Frasinelli ‘acted in a manner inconsistent with acceptance of responsibility.’”
The forged letters, attorneys wrote, should negate any reduction Frasinelli was set to receive for accepting responsibility. Rather than the sentence of 63 to 78 months that prosecutors agreed to recommend, they said the judge should instead consider the non-mitigated range of 78 to 97 months.
To that end, attorneys suggested Judge Hardy err on the higher end of that range, saying a sentence of 97 months is “consistent with the outrageous nature of his conduct.”
“Since the summer of 2020, Frasinelli has been unwaveringly deceptive,” attorneys wrote. “Now, Frasinelli has attempted to deceive this court into giving him a more lenient sentence than his offenses deserve.”
First Published: March 29, 2023, 10:37 p.m.
Updated: March 30, 2023, 10:03 a.m.
