Federal prosecutors have sued the owner of Portland’s River Pig Saloon, alleging he fraudulently obtained nearly $350,000 in COVID-era relief funds for a Eugene college bar that had already lost its liquor license and shut its doors. The lawsuit claims Ramzy Peter Hattar told the Small Business Administration that Taylor’s Bar & Grill still had 26 employees on payroll — weeks after Oregon regulators pulled the plug on the business for good.
According to a civil complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Portland and reported by KPTV, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission stripped Taylor’s of its liquor license on February 25, 2020, effectively closing the historic bar near the University of Oregon campus for good. Prosecutors say that just over a month later, on March 31, 2020, Hattar submitted an SBA disaster loan application on Taylor’s behalf, certifying the money would be used strictly as working capital for pandemic-related economic injury and that the bar still had 26 employees.
Hattar operated Taylor’s through a company called Zedan Outdoors, LLC, per the same account, which was administratively dissolved by the state in 2025. Court records cited by the station show the SBA disbursed an initial advance to the business in 2020, followed by an additional disaster loan disbursement in May of that year, with the company’s accounts receiving a deposit of $135,700 on May 6, 2020.
A Bar With a Documented History of Violence
Taylor’s wasn’t just any campus watering hole. The bar operated for 98 years before closing, according to historical reporting from the Daily Emerald. But its final years were marred by trouble: the Oregon Liquor Control Commission’s revocation order followed an investigation in which the OLCC notice listed 42 alleged incidents, with sufficient proof found for 36 of them, including severe assaults, alleged drink druggings, and patron brawls, the Daily Emerald reported…