A former news anchor who helped engineer one of the largest pandemic loan scams on record has been sentenced to a decade in federal prison—and will serve her time at the same minimum-security facility that houses Ghislaine Maxwell.
Stephanie Hockridge, 42, a former anchor for Phoenix’s ABC15, was sentenced Friday to 120 months in prison for her role in a sprawling scheme that siphoned off more than $63 million from the Paycheck Protection Program, the government’s $800 billion pandemic relief effort for small businesses. She was also ordered to pay nearly $64 million in restitution and will be placed on supervised release for two years.
The court recommended that Hockridge serve her sentence at Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, a minimum-security facility that is one of the most lenient lockups for nonviolent women offenders.
It is also the current home of Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, fraudulent biotechnology entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes, and reality television figure Jen Shah, who was jailed for her part in a long-running nationwide telemarketing scheme. Shah has reportedly secured early release, according to People.
Experts have told the Washington Post that the facility is a “country club” where Maxwell is enjoying “enormously preferential treatment.” She was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of sex trafficking. This is unusual given that inmates with sentences of 10 years or longer are typically barred from placement in minimum-security prisons.
Hockridge, meanwhile, fits neatly into the entry requirements timescale. She must surrender by 2 p.m. on December 30.
Chief District Judge Reed O’Connor of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas handed down the sentence, which followed Hockridge’s June conviction on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She had faced up to 20 years. She was acquitted of four other fraud counts.
According to prosecutors, from April 2020 to May 2021, Hockridge—alongside her husband, Nathan Reis, and other co-conspirators—built Blueacorn into a pandemic-era powerhouse by promising to help the smallest and most vulnerable businesses secure relief loans. But federal prosecutors said the company also helped itself.
As part of what the Justice Department described as an elaborate fraud, Hockridge and others offered a “VIPPP” service coaching applicants on how to submit false loan applications. Prosecutors said the group fabricated payroll records, tax filings, and bank statements to inflate payouts—and then charged kickbacks based on a percentage of the money received.
Hockridge’s attorney, Richard E. Finneran of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, said he believes her conviction will be overturned on appeal. “Ms. Hockridge was sentenced to 10 years in prison for loans that the prosecutors never proved were fraudulent in the first place,” he said in a statement.
Hockridge hired four former FBI special agents to run their own review—one of whom told the court that, using the government’s own spreadsheets, most of the loans showed no reliable signs of fraud. One of them, former Special Agent Eric Mills, said: “Our team spent more than a thousand hours reviewing the Government’s list of allegedly fraudulent loans. For all but five loans, the government did not even subpoena the borrowers’ financial records to prove that the loans were fraudulent.”
Reis pleaded guilty in August to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and will be sentenced in December.
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