A former Denver restaurateur was arrested and indicted final week on expenses of fraud, with federal prosecutors accusing him of receiving greater than $1 million in pandemic reduction loans underneath false pretenses and for his private profit.
Jared Leonard, whose restaurant group included the Michelin-recommended AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q, made his preliminary look within the U.S. District Court docket of Colorado in Denver final week. On Monday, a Justice of the Peace decide ordered Leonard be transferred to the northern district of Illinois in Chicago, the place he lived beforehand, and the place expenses have been initially filed final month. He stays in federal custody, in response to court docket paperwork.
Leonard’s restaurant operations in Colorado formally led to February, when the employees of AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q give up en masse and accused him of failing to report taxes or well being care contributions. He had already shut down two different ideas, Grabowski’s Pizzeria and Campfire, earlier that month. On the time, he instructed JHB he had moved to Mexico to run his remaining eating places within the Punta Mita resort neighborhood.
A spokesperson for the U.S. District Court docket of Colorado and Jennifer Beck, the general public defender who represented Leonard in Denver, declined to touch upon the case. The district court docket spokesperson wouldn’t affirm the place Leonard was arrested.
In line with federal expenses filed in Illinois final month, Leonard had utilized for greater than $1.6 million in loans launched within the Coronavirus Support, Aid and Financial Safety Act. The laws was enacted as a lifeline for companies reeling from the results of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
In line with the fees, Leonard lied in regards to the variety of workers and month-to-month payroll at eating places in Denver and Chicago — together with Grabowski’s Pizzeria and AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q — in his purposes for the Paycheck Safety Program and Financial Harm Catastrophe Mortgage funds. One restaurant, BBQ Provide Co. in Chicago, had closed in 2018, prosecutors say.
Leonard used the funds for private purchases regardless of claiming they’d go towards enterprise functions, in response to federal prosecutors. The fees present he purchased a $1.2 million home in Colorado in 2020 with the cash and paid in money.
Federal prosecutors are charging Leonard with seven counts, together with financial institution and wire fraud. If convicted, he could possibly be compelled to pay the federal authorities $1.9 million and forfeit property he acquired with the reduction funds, in response to the fees.
The Colorado Division of Income seized and auctioned off AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q after the restaurant’s workers give up. The restaurant is underneath new possession and a brand new title, Riot BBQ Co.
Patrick Klaiber, the pitmaster who helped win AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q a Bib Gourmand classification within the state’s unique Michelin Information in 2023, is behind the brand new enterprise alongside chef Manny Barella.
“I’m completely satisfied it lastly all caught as much as him,” Klaiber stated Monday.
Different entities of Leonard’s implicated within the legal case are Hamburger Stan in Chicago and an umbrella group known as SS Collective.
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