Date: Jan. 26, 2024 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Lexington, KY — A Lexington woman, Sandybell Fierro has been sentenced to 21 months in federal prison, by U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell, for wire fraud and money laundering. According to her plea agreement, on April 5, 2021, Fierro submitted a materially false application to the Small Business Administration (SBA), to obtain an Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL), due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fierro falsely stated in the application that she established a personal services business, “Sandybell Fierro” in 2018, that the business had 17 employees, that she had sold $94,000 worth of goods in the last 12 months, and that the business had a gross revenue of $197,000. However, no such business existed. As a result of Fierro’s misrepresentations in the application, she was awarded a EIDL in the amount of $206,000, which she used for her own benefit. As part of her sentencing, Fierro was ordered to pay $206,000 in restitution to the SBA. Under federal law, Fierro must serve 85 percent of her prison sentence. Upon her release from prison, she will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for three years. Carlton S. Shier, IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, and Bryant Jackson, Special Agent in Charge, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (CI), jointly announced the sentence. The investigation was conducted by the CI. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrea Mattingly Williams and Brittany Dunn-Pirio prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States. CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
