PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The owner of a since-closed Montgomery County restaurant has been sentenced to nearly two years in federal prison for defrauding COVID-19 relief programs of nearly $1 million, federal officials announced Tuesday.
Giuseppina “Josephine” Leone, 62, of North Wales, was charged with three counts of wire fraud after making false representations to programs that provided emergency financial assistance to business owners struggling during the pandemic. She pleaded guilty to those charges in May.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Leone and her husband owned and operated Ristorante San Marco, an Italian restaurant in Ambler. They posted on Facebook in March 2020 that the restaurant would temporarily close due to the pandemic, but it never reopened.
Between April 2020 and May 2021, officials said Leone requested and received hundreds of thousands of dollars three times from two different federal COVID-19 relief programs, despite her restaurant remaining closed.
In addition to her 21-month prison sentence, Leone will have to pay a $50,000 fine.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office noted that Leone has paid more than $972,000 in full restitution.