WHITE PLAINS – Well known Liberty car dealer Howard Braunstein was sentenced last week to a year and a day in prison for cheating on the federal Paycheck Protection Progam (PPP).

The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Justice Philip M. Halpern on November 30 in federal court, White Plains.

Nearly 35 people were in the courtroom at the sentencing to support Braunstein.

More than 50 friends, family, former customers and business associates had submitted letters to the court attesting to his decency and urging leniency in the sentencing.

They described a profound record of supporting charities and individuals, particularly people with disabilities and youths in need of mentoring.

“The number and diversity of the supportive letters speak to a man who dedicated his time and resources to many causes and touched many lives,” Prosecutor Heavey wrote in her sentencing letter. 

But she depicted his crimes as brazen.

Judge Halpern recommended that the Bureau of Prisons put Braunstein in the FCE Coleman satellite minimum security camp in Sumterville, Florida.

He ordered Braunstein to surrender on Feb. 27.

Braunstein had pled guilty to one count of wire fraud for signing a foregiveness application on second PPP loan.

Judge Halpern ordered Braunstein to pay $355,638 in restitution to the U.S. Small Business Administration and to forfeit $350,000 to the government.

The case against Braunstein revolved around his two companies – M & M Auto Group and M & M Powersports, filing for and receiving PPP loans between April 2020 and October 2021, according to the brief charging documents.

According to the PPP database, Braunstein’s two companies received a total of $731,669 in two loans.

One loan was to M & M Auto Group, Inc., which received $350,000 in May 2020 to cover payroll for 24 employees.

The other loan was to M & M Powersports, Inc., which received $381,669 in April 2020 to cover payroll of 23 employees.

A year later, Braunstein applied for loan forgiveness, claiming the funds had been spent on payroll and rent.

However, according to court records, prosecutors said the applications were a sham.

According to published reports, M & M Auto Group, for instance, had been bankrupt since 2019; it did not exist as of the February 2020 threshold, it had no employees and it paid no rent.

Braunstein used the same payroll figures for both applications, in effect double counting his employees.

In seeking loan foregiveness, Braunstein claimed that both companies paid $179,664 in rent, according to court records, when in fact no rent had been paid.

Assistant Prosecutor Courtney L. Heavey’s sentencing letter said Braunstein did owe a mortgage for the property on which the business operated, but “he failed to pay a dime toward the mortgage.”

Instead, Heavy says, Braunstein used the money to prop up his business long enough to sell it and then retire to Florida, according to published reports.

Defense attorney Kerry A. Lawrence asked the court to impose no prison time.

Lawrence placed much of the blame on Donald Raimondi, the business’s controller, who handled much of the paperwork and who allegedly embezzled $500,000 to $600,000 from Braunstein’s companies.

But prosecutor Heavy noted that Braunstein had fired Raimondi more than a year before the fraudulent loan forgiveness paper was submitted, and that Raimondi had probably stolen about $160,000, a published report said.

“This was not a failure to oversee the actions of the employees engaged in fraud,” Heavey stated. “The defendant was not asleep at the wheel, he was the driving force behind the fraud.”