Man Swindles $50K In Coronavirus Relief With Fake Car Wash: Feds

BROOKLYN, NY — Cops investigating a Brooklyn man accused of cutting the brakes on an NYPD van discovered he had swindled $50,000 in coronavirus relief funds when searching his phone, prosecutors announced this week.

Jeremy Trapp — who was charged over the summer with cutting brakes on a police van in Sunset Park — faced a new criminal complaint this week accusing him of pretending to own a car wash to get a federal loan set up to help small businesses in the coronavirus crisis.

“While small business owners around the country were scrambling to make ends meet and find ways to compensate their employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, Trapp blatantly lied on an application for economic stimulus, as alleged today,” FBI Assistant Director-in- Charge William F. Sweeney said. “Without a legitimate business to claim or any employees to pay, he wasn’t at all eligible for the funding he eventually received."

Investigators caught onto Trapp, 24, when they got a warrant from the NYPD van case to search his phone and found screenshots about the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program loan, according to court documents.

Authorities confirmed with the Small Business Administration that Trapp had applied in June for a loan under the EIDL, which was expanded to help businesses suffering in the coronavirus crisis.

On the application, Trapp said he ran a car wash out of his Brooklyn home with 10 employees and that the business had made $105,000 a year before the pandemic, prosecutors said.

The SBA approved a $42,500 loan and a $10,000 grant for Trapp, which they wired into a bank account Trapp had opened just days before.

FBI agents who had arrested Trapp at his home for the NYPD case grew suspicious.

"When the FBI arrested TRAPP at the Trapp Residence on August 5, 2020, there was no evidence that a car wash business was located (or had ever been located) at that residential location," they wrote in the complaint.

Trapp's mom, who he lived with, later confirmed to investigators that Trapp had never run a car wash out of their home. Her son had never employed 10 people at their home for any business, she told investigators.

"The FBI’s own review of the Trapp Residence confirmed that a commercial car wash business could not reasonably be located in an apartment in a multi-unit residential building," prosecutors said.

If convicted of the wire fraud, Trapp faces up to 20 years in prison, according to prosecutors.

The 24-year-old is also facing a potential 20-year sentence for the reckless endangerment and criminal mischief charges related to the NYPD van incident.

That arrest made headlines when reporters discovered the NYPD had sent a paid informant to surveil, befriend and ultimately drive Trapp to attack the police van.

Trapp met the civilian informant in July outside Brooklyn Criminal Court, where protesters were gathered to demand the release of people arrested during a demonstration in Bay Ridge, according to Gothamist.

The source and Trapp exchanged phone numbers and met up three times, including on July 17, when the informant picked up Trapp at his mother's home and drove him to Sunset Park. Trapp used a tool to crawl under a police fan and cut part of the brake lines while the informant acted as a look out, according to the report.

Trapp was arrested shortly after.