Mauricio Umansky has been accused of fraudulently obtaining $3.5 million from pandemic relief loans. According to court documents obtained by Us Weekly on Thursday, August 29, Realtor LLC claimed in a new lawsuit that Umansky, 54, and his real estate company, The Agency, applied for and received two Payroll Protection Program (PPP) and CARES Act loans in the total amount of $3,521,153.
00. The program was created to help prevent the termination of employees by providing loans to businesses that were unable to pay workers due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuit accused Umansky’s company of “falsely” certifying their need for the loans to pay their employees.
The docs stated the amounts The Agency “applied for and received exceeded the loan limit of 2.5 monthly salary with a cap of $100,000 annual salary per employee.” Realtor LLC alleged that Umansky’s company would have been minimally impacted by the pandemic shutdown because their revenue came from real estate transactions “typically between millionaires and billionaires,” not consumers who were unable to buy goods because of the restrictions from the shut-down.
The filing claimed that The Agency’s business “grew massively” during the pandemic by earning $6.5 billion in 2020 and $11.2 billion the following year.
“With this knowledge, Defendants would have retained significant reserves to continue to pay their employees. To do otherwise would have been grossly irresponsible, especially f.