Little Rock businesswoman Chandler Wilson Carroll is hoping to get a lighter federal prison term when she is sentenced on Thursday.
Carroll is facing between 33 months and 41 months in prison after she pleaded guilty in July to one count of wire fraud in connection with fraudulently collecting $1.6 million in a pandemic loan.
Last month, Carroll’s attorney, Timothy O. Dudley of Little Rock, filed a motion asking U.S. District Court Judge D.P. Marshall Jr. to sentence her to less time in prison than the sentencing guideline range allows — or sentence her to probation.
Carroll’s two small children need her, Dudley wrote. She also needs long-term mental health care, he said.
Imprisoning Carroll would be punishment, “but it would be punishment greater than necessary,” Dudley wrote.
He said that Carroll had several traumatic instances as a child or young adult, but he didn’t want to air the details in a public document.
Carroll also delivered a child in 2021, and during the cesarean section, the epidural wore off, “and she was in intense pain throughout the procedure,” Dudley wrote. “Defendant suffered severe postpartum depression following the child’s birth.”
Carroll, Dudley said, has long struggled with her mental health and suffered a severe mental health episode in July, partly attributed to her marriage; Carroll has now filed for divorce.
Carroll has been in a trauma-centered treatment program and that will take a year to complete.
He said that her mental condition is grounds for a sentence below the guideline range.
Carroll acknowledges that her crime is a serious one, Dudley said. It began in May 2020, when Carroll received a $1.6 million Paycheck Protection Program loan for her company, Wilcarr Ventures LLC. She said on the application that the money was in part to be used for lost revenue.
But that was incorrect, Carroll said when she pleaded guilty. The money was spent on a house, two vehicles and multiple items from jeweler Sissy’s Log Cabin.
The indictment said she reported on the application that her average monthly payroll was $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.
Judge Marshall asked her why she did it. “Well, we needed the money, I suppose,” Carroll said.
The sentencing is set for 10 a.m. in Marshall’s courtroom in Little Rock federal court.
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