A former Metropolitan Police Department officer is again under federal scrutiny, accused of siphoning $18,345 in Paycheck Protection Program relief while trying to land a job with the Seattle Police Department. Prosecutors say Roberto Adams pulled the cash through a one-person cleaning business, spent it on himself, and then had the loans flagged during a background check for the Seattle gig. The case now sits at the intersection of pandemic-relief fraud allegations, a multiagency criminal probe and a tangle of procedural rulings from the federal appeals court.
According to federal prosecutors, Adams applied for and received PPP loans on behalf of SuperKlean LLC even though the company had no employees and no reported income. One disbursement of $18,345 allegedly hit his account on Jan. 29, 2021, and investigators say he quickly burned through it on rent, gambling, travel, clothing and other personal expenses. They say a $12,110 payment toward rental arrears, along with other personal purchases, was traced straight back to the loan proceeds, as detailed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The legal path has been anything but straightforward. After a federal jury returned a mixed verdict in 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit concluded the trial judge left out a required jury instruction and upheld the district court’s decision to order a new trial. The appeals court said that omission undercut the fairness of the original proceedings, according to the D.C. Circuit…