7-year term for Eden Prairie man who stole $1.6M in COVID-19 relief funds, fled to Colombia

A prison term exceeding seven years has been given to an Eden Prairie man who fraudulently received more than $1.6 million in COVID-19 relief funds, stole another person’s identity and fled to his wife’s native country of Colombia.

Harold Bennie Kaeding, 75, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in St. Paul last week after jurors found him guilty in August of three counts each of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, and one count of money laundering.

Along with a prison sentence of 7¼ years, Judge Eric Tostrud ordered Kaeding to make restitution of the nearly $660,000 in connection with his scheme and serve three years of court supervision upon his release from prison.

Ahead of sentencing, Kaeding’s defense attorneys urged the judge to impose no more incarceration for their client since his arrest. They argued in writing that his advanced age and a host of health problems “make any additional prison time unduly difficult and perilous.”

In early 2021, Kaeding fled alone to Colombia, his wife’s native country, in an apparent attempt to evade prosecution, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Law enforcement eventually found him there in November 2021 and had him deported back to the United States.

According to prosecutors:

Between March and May 2020, Kaeding applied for nearly $2.2 million in loans through the Paycheck Protection and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs. He used the names of his own close family members to submit the loan applications in the names of six purported corporate entities.

But these entities filed no tax returns and did not report the payment of wages to a single employee for calendar years 2019 and 2020. Kaeding instead fabricated tax documents, manufactured bank statements and submitted other records to ensure the applications appeared legitimate.

These false statements to lenders included the number of employees a given entity employed, the amount of average monthly payroll expenses, and false statements about the intended use of the loan proceeds.

Kaeding initially received more than $1.6 million in ill-gotten proceeds before some banks detected irregularities and reclaimed some of the money. This left Kaeding with nearly $660,000 that he transferred to bank accounts he controlled that were often opened in the names of the family members.

Kaeding used the money to spare his home from impending foreclosure, buy an SUV and stockpile more than $80,000 in cash.