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A former television news anchor joked about cheating taxpayers in a text sent to her husband prior to being convicted of a billion-dollar COVID fraud scheme.
Stephanie Hockridge-Reis, who was a former Emmy-nominated local Phoenix news anchor prior to becoming a fintech entrepreneur, told her husband, Nathan Reis, that they were "trying to apply for free money" when they requested Payment Protection Program (PPP) loans during the height of the pandemic.
“This is us trying to apply for free money — when we don’t quite qualify. lol,” she texted, according to a federal indictment obtained by the Arizona Republic.
The couple was accused of fraudulently obtaining more than $300,000 in PPP loans, with Reis, 47, having falsely claimed to have been a military veteran and African American on the application. Reis accepted a plea deal on Monday (August 11) and is scheduled for sentencing in November.
Hockridge-Reis, 42, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, but acquitted on four additional counts of wire fraud, in June and faces up to 20 years in prison ahead of her scheduled sentencing in October. The couple's firm, Blueacorn, which they co-founded in 2020, processed more than $12.5 billion in PPP loans, with an estimated $250 million to $300 million going to its ownership, which included Hockridge-Reis.
The company reportedly received more than $1 billion in taxpayer-funded processing fees for facilitating the loans, but spent less than 1% (8.6 million) on fraud prevention and just $13.7 million on eligibility verification, as part of the PPP federal loan initiative aimed to help small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hockridge-Reis spent seven years as an anchor for KNXV-TV in Phoenix, where she was nominated for an Emmy and named 'Favorite Newscaster' by Arizona Foothills Magazine.