He bought Central Florida estate with COVID-19 aid money, feds say. Now he’s going to prison
A man who fraudulently obtained more than $7 million in COVID-19 relief funds and spent the money on luxury cars and a 12-acre estate in Seminole County before fleeing to Europe has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison, federal authorities said.
Don V. Cisternino, 47, was sentenced Wednesday to 102 months behind bars after pleading guilty to wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and illegal monetary transactions, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida.
In a news release, the agency said that Cisternino in May 2020 secured about $7.2 million in potentially forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, which launched early in the pandemic to help affected businesses retain their employees and cover expenses.
According to prosecutors, Cisternino requested the loan on the behalf of his company, MagnifiCo, which he claimed had about 440 employees and monthly payroll costs north of $2.8 million.
“In truth, MagnifiCo had no employees other than Cisternino,” William Daniels, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said in a press release.
Prosecutors say Cisternino faked W-2 tax forms for his would-be workers — in some cases using the names and Social Security numbers of real people without their consent — to make his application appear legitimate.
With the ill-gotten millions, prosecutors say, Cisternino bought Maserati and Mercedes-Benz vehicles and a 12,000-plus-square-foot mansion in Seminole County. The seven-bed, 11-bath home — which features a theater, a horse barn and a tennis court — cost $3.5 million, records show.
But he’d soon seek refuge nearly 5,000 miles from home.
Cisternino fled to Switzerland in January 2021, after agents visited his estate and told him he was under investigation, records show. He was later arrested on an Interpol Red Notice when he tried to enter Croatia from Slovenia.
In a distributed statement, Michael Galdo, the Justice Department’s acting director of COVID-19 fraud enforcement, said Cisternino used the PPP program “as his personal pandemic piggyback.”
“This case demonstrates the Department of Justice’s ongoing commitment to prosecute those who defrauded our pandemic relief programs and bring them to justice no matter where in the world they try to hide,” Galdo said.
U.S. District Judge Wendy Berger ordered Cisternino to forfeit more than $8 million in proceeds from the fraud and pay the U.S. Small Business Administration more than $7 million in restitution, Daniels said.
