Feds: Scott Twp. man set up fake PPP loans for gold bars, college tuition, fancy cars and more

He bought a Ford Mustang, two Mercedes SUVs, a BMW, a Land Rover and Porsche.

He bought gold bars and silver coins, jewelry, art and firearms. He gave money to his family. He paid their college tuition.

All of that, the FBI said, after Randy Frasinelli fraudulently applied for and received $3.8 million in federal Paycheck Protection Program loans — money earmarked by the federal government to help small businesses continue paying their employees during the covid-19 pandemic.

On Thursday, Frasinelli, 64, of Scott, was arrested and charged by criminal complaint with bank fraud and money laundering. He was released on bond.

Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Frasinelli said he had no comment.

A 22-page federal court filing lays out a complex scheme — including falsified tax records and payroll reports — that Frasinelli used to obtain five separate paycheck protection loans. The last one, for $1.3 million, was received on March 13 — more than a month after the FBI served search warrants on Frasinelli and seized several of the vehicles he had purchased with the money they said he illegally obtained.

According to FBI Special Agent Sean Langford, Frasinelli applied for paycheck protection loans for four companies: Grant-Williams Associates, Grant-Williams Global, Grant-Williams International and Grant-Williams Associates Corp.

To obtain the PPP loans, small businesses were required to provide their average monthly payroll expenses, number of employees and supporting documentation.

The application specifically includes this certification: “The funds will be used to retain workers and maintain payroll or make mortgage interest payments, lease payments, and utility payments, as specified. … I understand that if the funds are knowingly used for unauthorized purposes, the federal government may hold me legally liable, such as for charges of fraud.”

In applying for the loans, the FBI said, Frasinelli claimed different numbers of employees at each company.

In one loan application for Grant-Williams Associates, Frasinelli claimed to have 23 employees who each earned $156,000 annually.

But in another application for the same company, Frasinelli claimed to have six employees who earned $82,833 annually on average in 2019, the FBI said.

In his loan application for Grant-Williams Global, Frasinelli claimed to have 12 employees, and for Grant-Williams International, he claimed to have 65 employees, investigators said.

However, according to the state Department of Revenue, there were no business entity records for those companies or the Employer Identification Numbers that Frasinelli provided, nor were there any W-2 Wages and Withholding Reports for 2019 or 2020.

In total, he received five separate loans. The accounts the loans were deposited into had little or no money in them prior to that. When the government seized them, most of them were nearly empty, according to the criminal complaint.

The FBI says that, in addition to buying luxury cars, Frasinelli spent the money on domestic and international travel for himself and family members, precious metals from online dealers and cryptocurrency.

As part of the allegations against him, investigators said that Frasinelli wired $1.8 million of the loan money into a Fidelity Investment account in his own name.

On some of the loan applications, he listed his business address as a ranch house in Scott, where he lives, the complaint said. In others, he provided an address in One Oxford Centre that traces back to a company whose employee said they’d never heard of Frasinelli, authorities said.

A LinkedIn account for Frasinelli shows that he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1986, an MBA from Cornell in 1988 and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003.

The profile also shows him as the founder and global managing director for Grant-Williams Associates, from January 1995 to the present.

According to a November 2000 article in the Pittsburgh Business Times, Frasinelli founded Grant-Williams Associates, which was described as “an executive professional search firm,” in 1992.

The story said the company placed managers nationwide, and was responsible for placing executives at several Pittsburgh locations, including the Pittsburgh Technology Council, Innovation Works, FreeMarkets Inc. and Carnegie Mellon.

A Business Wire release from February 2014 shows that Frasinelli had just become a new partner at Boyden Global, based in Pittsburgh.

A woman who answered at Boyden on Thursday said she could not comment.

Pennsylvania Department of State business records show that Frasinelli was listed as president of Grant-Williams Associates Corporation, which was created in January 2008.

The address listed on the website is the same one the FBI said did not trace to that company in One Oxford Centre.

It appears Frasinelli has had financial problems in the past. He is named as a defendant in dozens of tax cases in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court from 2000 through 2019.