Olivia Ware, Bank Fraud, Georgia 2022

ATLANTA – In a shocking turn of events, Olivia Ware, a former mayoral candidate for the City of Conyers, has been sentenced to prison for using a company she started to steal over $323,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

According to court documents, Ware, 63, of Oxford, Georgia, formed a Georgia company called Let’s Talk About the Family, Inc. (Let’s Talk) before the pandemic. However, the investigation revealed that Let’s Talk had not filed federal or state records indicating it paid any taxes or wages to any employees for several years prior to 2020.

In April 2020, Ware submitted a PPP loan application to an authorized PPP lender for Let’s Talk, attaching fictitious and forged federal tax records purporting to show Let’s Talk was earning millions of dollars in revenue and had 54 employees prior to the pandemic. However, many of the so-called employees, when contacted by federal agents, reported that they had never even heard of Ware or Let’s Talk.

As a result of the materially false information from Ware, a bank issued $323,100 in PPP funds to Let’s Talk. Ware then spent the fraudulently obtained PPP proceeds for her own benefit, including to buy a $24,000 swimming pool, furniture, and a multitude of other home improvement items. She also used stolen PPP funds to pay down the mortgage on her primary residence.

Olivia Ware was sentenced to two years in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $323,100 in restitution to the Small Business Administration. The sentence was imposed following Ware’s guilty plea to bank fraud on March 23, 2022.

This case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security – Homeland Security Investigations. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Trevor C. Wilmot and Bernita B. Malloy prosecuted the case.

The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Ryan K. Buchanan, called Ware’s actions ‘shameless’ and said she had ‘defrauded taxpayers to enrich herself.’

The COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force, established in 2021, helped investigate this case and others like it. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute pandemic-related fraud.