CLEVELAND (WJW) — The owner of a shuttered Ohio City restaurant who admitted to spending more than $800,000 in federal pandemic business relief funds on himself is now headed to prison.
Marcelo Fadul Neves, 60, of Westlake, was indicted in March 2025 on 15 counts including grand theft, theft, telecommunications fraud, tampering with records and passing bad checks, court records show.
Sister of teen killed in Mackenzie Shirilla crash speaks on movie, time since brother’s death
Neves in 2021 applied for relief through the Restaurant Revitalization funding, administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration to help struggling restaurants keep their doors open during the COVID-19 pandemic, and received $846,720 for his business.
But Crop Bistro, along Lorain Avenue in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, had already closed, according to prosecutors…