Torres: Vulture of a scam artist finally behind bars

Sometimes the good guys win, the bad guys get caught and go to prison.

Sometimes journalists like to tell the stories of these crooks, especially the dumb ones and the heartless ones. We do it mainly as a public service.

Sometimes we do it because it feels good to tell the world that justice triumphed.

This is one of those times.

A Palm Bay man named Johnson Lenois Eustache or Jean Eustache or Johnson W. Eustache — depending on what scam he was pulling at the moment — was sentenced to five years in federal prison for COVID relief fraud and tax fraud.

Good riddance. Brevard County, Florida and the world will be better off with Eustache locked away.

The soon-to-be 40-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen was born in Haiti will spend the next several birthdays behind bars. He seemed to be on a path to prison during at least the last seven years or so.

Even when he was working an honest job — in the culinary department for the Magic Kingdom in 2015 — Eustache was running afoul of the law.

A sexual assault claim was made against him by a woman he met on a dating app. According to the report by the Orange County Sheriff's Office, Eustache nearly raped the woman after violating her with his fingers. She escaped from his car and called her mother to come and pick her up. They went right to the authorities.

Eustache denied everything. He even denied knowing the woman and denied texting her even after investigators presented him with copies of calls and text messages and a video of them entering a movie theater together. Even though investigators knew he was lying about knowing the woman, the case was not strong enough to press charges.

He went free.

In 2017, while working preparing taxes mainly for immigrants, a complaint was made that Johnson kept $1,500 of a $7,000 tax refund from one of his clients. Again, no charges were filed.

It was shortly after that incident that he set up shop in Brevard County, opening up Paradise Center Immigrant Services, boasting offices in Rockledge and Palm Bay.

He was the owner and operator of a sham law office, where he claimed to be an immigration lawyer, specializing in ripping off poor Haitian immigrants. He collected thousands of dollars from the unwitting and did nothing for them in return.

Eustache was convicted on Dec. 3, 2019, of being a make-believe lawyer as well as organized fraud to obtain property. Again, he avoided prison and was sentenced to five years probation for each conviction.

But people like Eustache never seem to learn their lesson, no matter how many proverbial bullets they dodge.

And so while most of the world was grappling with layoffs, unemployment and a tanking economy due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Eustache was having none of that. Despite having no employees working for him, Eustache used his name, his company's name and the names of unwitting family members and associates to file 13 bogus claims with the government for COVID-19 assistance seeking in excess of $2.1 million.

He submitted fraudulent applications for assistance to: Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL), Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and PPP loan servicers and lenders.

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Eustache lied on the applications about the number of employees he had and his criminal record. He claimed he had 10 employees and paid out $96,703 monthly for payroll.

In total, he received $1.3 million from the government to keep his non-existent businesses going. He even had the nerve to then file a false tax return showing $15,000 in losses.

According to court records, Eustache used the funds to make personal financial investments, to purchase real estate, and to construct numerous residential properties in Palm Bay and Poinciana.

The law caught up with Eustache and he pleaded guilty to the fraud. Last week a federal judge sentenced him to five years in prison and he had to forfeit $700,000 in cash and real property.

Internal Revenue Service agent Brian Payne said Eustache "“stole vital PPP loan money intended to support struggling businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. This sentence shows that stopping PPP fraudsters."

Added FBI agent Michael McPherson: “We’re taking tremendous investigative steps to ensure fraudsters don’t profit from the pandemic.”

Things have been bad enough these last two years as we all learn to adjust to this new world without having to worry about scam artists like Eustache hovering over our metaphorical carcasses like a vulture.

Let's hope he learns his lesson behind bars.

Contact Torres at 321-242-3684 or at jtorres@floridatoday.com. You can follow him on Twitter @johnalbertorres or on Facebook at facebook.com/FTjohntorres.

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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Torres: Vulture of a scam artist finally behind bars