Little Rock businesswoman Chandler Wilson Carroll pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to fraudulently collecting $1.6 million in a pandemic loan.
Carroll, 32, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in exchange for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Arkansas agreeing to drop the four counts each of wire fraud and money laundering she faced.
Carroll could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine when U.S. District Court Judge D.P. Marshall Jr. sentences her, which is scheduled for Dec. 18. She also could be sentenced up to three years of probation.
She also agreed to pay $1.9 million in restitution and forfeit assets including a 2020 Ford Explorer and diamond earrings as part of the plea agreement.
The scheme began in May 2020, when Carroll received a $1.6 million Paycheck Protection Program loan for her company, Wilcarr Ventures LLC, according to the indictment. Celtic Bank of Salt Lake City provided the money. “I took out the loan, yes sir,” Carroll told Marshall.
He asked her why she did it.
“Well, we needed the money, I suppose,” Carroll said. She said on the application that the money was in part to be used for lost revenue. But that was incorrect, she said. The money was spent on a house, two vehicles and multiple items from jeweler Sissy’s Log Cabin.
The indictment said that she reported on the application that her average monthly payroll as $640,000 with 121 workers. But a former employee told police that the business had just been launched and did not have more than four employees, according to the document.
Carroll told Little Rock Soirée in 2020 that she founded the “WilCarr team of companies to serve the regulatory needs of medical device and health insurance companies across the U.S.” She claimed to lead a multinational operation that helped shepherd devices through the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and other regulatory bodies with consulting, resource and funding support.
During the proceeding Tuesday, Marshall quizzed Carroll, who has a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, about the proposed plea agreement. Occasionally, Carroll stopped the questions to confer with her attorney, Tim Dudley of Little Rock.
The federal indictment unsealed last year alleged that Carroll fraudulently collected $2.08 million in pandemic-era small-business loans. As part of the plea deal, that indictment was dismissed Tuesday, and Carroll pleaded guilty to a superseding information.
At the hearing, the U.S. attorney’s office was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney John White.
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