Mississippi business magnates Tommy and James Duff are slugging it out in federal court with the Justice Department and some private attorneys over alleged PPP fraud. Michael Goldberg reported in Barksdale Today:
Billionaire Tommy Duff, a likely candidate for governor, and his brother James Duff are being sued by California-based attorneys on behalf of the federal government alleging the men and their companies improperly obtained over $6.7 million in federal pandemic loans. The lawsuit, which was filed under seal in the U.S. Northern District of California in 2024, claims the brothers – the wealthiest people in Mississippi – took advantage of a program designed to help small businesses cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. The plaintiff in the case is Relator LLC, a limited liability corporation formed, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, by California attorneys Anoush Hakimi and Peter Shahriari. ... The complaint references that wealth to paint a stark picture, alleging the Duffs “looted the government” by submitting “falsified loan documents” to the Small Business Administration in order to obtain taxpayer-funded payments through the Paycheck Protection Program. Congress created the program in March of 2020 to keep businesses afloat as the global economy shuddered to a halt at the outset of the pandemic. In court filings, attorneys for Duff have sharply contested the claims, arguing the lawsuit relies on “inflammatory rhetoric” instead of facts. The Duffs’ legal team has also pointed out that the California attorneys have filed similar lawsuits against other individuals, some of which have been dismissed, and argue the lawsuit is the product of trial lawyers looking to capitalize on confusion surrounding pandemic-era government programs. .... In a statement to Mississippi Today, Matthew D. Miller, an attorney for the Duffs, said he expected his clients to be “fully vindicated by the judicial process.” “The PPP loans were lawfully obtained, fully disclosed and reviewed by banks, the SBA and federal attorneys,” Miller wrote. “This case is exactly the kind of parasitic, web-scraped lawsuit that courts have repeatedly rejected from this plaintiff. The allegations were also independently reviewed by the Department of Justice which, after this review, declined to intervene in this lawsuit.”
The lawsuit and motion to dismiss are posted below.
The case was transferred because the Duffs successfully argued the U.S. District Court in California lacked personal jurisdiction over the brothers.
19 comments:
I agree with the Duff's. They employ more people in rural MS that you can imagine. The Duff's have made a good life and legacy for themselves.
If true, a Californian will have done more to stop welfare fraud than Shadrack Tucker White.
Can someone explain how this works? The Federal Government declines to prosecute, so an LLC owned by 2 trial lawyers can bring a suit alleging fraud - and do they keep they money if they win?
The trial lawyers get anywhere between 10 and 30% of sums recovered. That's why there are so many of these lawsuits.Like running a trot line.
Tens of thousands of federal criminal prosecutions have been dismissed by federal prosecutors recently so that they can focus on the immigration and other cases the administration thinks are moreimportant.
The Dems were smart enough to put a public reporting/lawsuit abuse provision in the PPP grift law because there was no way the federal government was going to investigate the largest fraud in America history, especially with the most corrupt executive in charge. And look at here, looks like Duff got caught with his hand in the grift cookie jar. I imagine there’s many more that will be caught before the SoL is up.
PPP was a taxpayer handout/payback to GOP campaign donors with COVID used as cover. If you want to know why inflation ran rampant for the next 5 years, the PPP “loans” program is your answer. As they say with student loans, how about all yall mfers pay back your loans?
These are CA plaintiff lawyers filing everywhere they can. Huge NothingBurger.
$6.7 million, it looks like them boys are amateurs. They need to import some of those Somalis from Minnesota to show them how it's really done.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the rampant fraud that went on under Trump's PPP squander of taxpayer money.
Personal jurisdiction in federal court in California is a real problem for the plaintiff.
Which desperate GOP candidate is pushing this story with Mississippi Today and other media?
3:42 PM, the PPP program was likely as you stated, “the largest fraud in America history.”
But, your statement that “PPP was a taxpayer handout/payback to GOP campaign donors with COVID used as cover,” is absolute horse s__t, as the PPP program was a total, bipartisan scam.
“Cares Act” final vote counts:
Senate March 25, 2020: 96–0 (unanimous).
House March 27, 2020: Voice vote (no recorded roll call, overwhelmingly approved).
Congratulations 3:42 PM, because you are in the very, very small minority of those that both understand, and are willing to admit that this giveaway of hundreds of billions of dollars, absolutely caused the inflation. The very inflation that, as an example, caused starter homes to cost 50% to 100% more than those same homes did prior to the PPP scam.
But here’s some more fun facts: the so-called loans were forgiven, as long as the so-called borrower could show payroll, etc. had been made over a very, very short period of time. AND – the so-called loan forgiveness applied to businesses that were booming, i.e. did not even need the government welfare - at all.
So with the PPP scam, there’s no “yall mfers pay back your loans,” because the vast, vast majority of loans were forgiven. Now, what do you think business owners do with the 7 or even 8 figure of tax free tax payer funded welfare that they did not need or deserve? Yep, you likely guessed it right; they spent it.
Now for the really sad news: out of the million plus so-called teaching at these so-called learning institutions called colleges, how many have you heard from that are both smart enough to even know what happened, AND have the integrity required to expose “the largest fraud in America history?”
Professional plaintiffs. Scum.
And so begins the mud slinging
So the Barksdalers and LaddCo are really closet GOP supporters? Who knew?
6.7 million in PPP relative to the number of people the Duff's companies employ is a pittance. A quick Google search identifies 16,000 employees nationwide. That's $419 per employee. Even in a California court, this will go nowhere.
So the Cliffnotes are that the California Plaintiff's Attorneys are behaving like California Plaintiff's Attorneys and The Duff Brothers are behaving like The Duff Brothers. Nothing to See Here.
If the government didn’t intervene the case is statistically worth very little money.
2:25 - Oh, that's good!
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