The owner of a Florida telecommunications company will spend the next five years in prison and his firm must pay a hefty fine regarding an “Obama phone” scam.
Q Link Wireless LLC and its owner, identified as CEO Issa Asad, previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud and steal federal funds from the Lifeline program that began in the 1980s, Fox News reported Sunday.
The program offers subsidized cellphone services to lower-income people. In 2012, a video emerged of a protester outside a Mitt Romney event who claimed her neighbors received an “Obama phone,” Breitbart News reported at the time.
When asked why she supported Obama, the woman said, “Everybody in Cleveland low minority got Obama Phone. Keep Obama in President, you know? He gave us a phone, he’s going to do more.”
The clip shows the woman standing with other protesters on the side of a roadway while holding signs. The Breitbart News article speculated that she may or may not have been a paid agitator:
The name “Obama Phone” caught on after the video went viral, and “some telecommunications companies with Lifeline contracts embraced the term, although the government did not,” the Fox article noted.
In 2013, Breitbart News reported that opposition to the “Lifeline” program was growing as Tracfone Wireless, “the company that most benefits from the government subsidy, is now advertising on inside-the-beltway news websites in an effort to save it.”
The Fox article said Asad was sentenced to prison and he, along with his company, must pay $128 million in fines.
In a press release on Friday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida shared more details of the case:
Meanwhile, Asad defrauded another federal government program, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), by making false statements about Q Link’s business. Congress created the PPP during the Covid-19 pandemic to authorize forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and certain other expenses. Asad, in Q Link’s name, executed a fraudulent scheme to obtain, and keep, PPP proceeds. To further the scheme, Asad made false statements about Q Link’s business, including a false claim that Q Link’s Lifeline reimbursements substantially decreased because of the pandemic. Asad then, in 2021, engaged in an unlawful financial transaction involving approximately $389,000 of those proceeds. Asad spent PPP loan proceeds on a Land Rover payment, his personal Amex card, jewelry, and personal property taxes.
Asad was reportedly charged with murder several years ago in connection with driving over a groundskeeper at his business, per the Fox article.
“He later pleaded no contest to misdemeanor culpable negligence and was slapped with one year of probation and ordered to pay a $225 fine,” the outlet said.
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