NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A Brooklyn man has pleaded guilty to cutting an NYPD van's brake line and falsely claiming he owned a car wash to secure COVID-19 relief funds, prosecutors say.
Jeremy Trapp, 24, entered the plea in Brooklyn federal court Friday morning, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York said in a press release.
"With his admissions of guilt today, Trapp will face the consequences of his flagrantly lawless and fraudulent conduct, first, in endangering the lives of police officers by sabotaging one of their vehicles, and second, by lining his pockets with stolen government funds intended to provide relief during the COVID-19 pandemic," Mark Lesko, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
Prosecutors say Trapp crawled under an NYPD van in Sunset Park last July and "partially severed" the vehicle's brake line.
A month before that, Trapp submitted a fraudulent application to a program that doles out low-interest loans to businesses that have suffered due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to prosecutors.
Trapp received a $42,500 loan and a $10,000 grant by claiming he owned a car wash in Brooklyn that employed 10 people, but the car wash did not exist, prosecutors said.
Trapp listed his own apartment building's address as the address of the car wash, according to prosecutors.
His attorney information wasn't immediately available Friday.
