Olive Branch woman sentenced, ordered to pay millions after PPP fraud scheme
Credit: U.S. Attorney’s Office – Northern Mississippi news release
April 24, 2025 – Zipora Hudson of Olive Branch was sentenced today by U.S. District Court Judge Michael P. Mills to five years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering following her trial conviction in January.
Judge Mills sentenced Zipora Hudson to a 60-month jail sentence followed by five years of supervised release for her role in a PPP fraud scheme that was presented to a federal jury and resulted in a guilty verdict on January 17, 2025. Hudson was also ordered to pay $3,526,517 in restitution.
The Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) was a COVID-19 pandemic relief program administered by the Small Business Administration (“SBA”) to provide funding for small businesses affected by the economic downturn associated with the Coronavirus Pandemic. According to court documents, Zipora Hudson, her son, Montreal Hudson, and Deandre Jones utilized Zippy Bee, LLC as a tax preparation business in Charleston, MS, to create and file hundreds of PPP loan applications on behalf of borrowers that were not eligible to receive the loans. The defendants created fraudulent Schedule C tax documents to claim gross income amounts that far exceeded the real income for a particular business or claimed gross income amounts for businesses that never existed. The documents were created in order to receive PPP loans in amounts ranging from $19,000 to $20,833 per loan. For their efforts, the defendants required the borrowers to pay them a kickback out of the proceeds of each loan. The defendants used the illegally obtained money to purchase luxury vehicles and real estate, among other things.
“By exploiting a government program designed to aid businesses during a national crisis, Zipora Hudson stole millions of dollars from American taxpayers,” said U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner. “The sentence imposed today should send a message to those responsible for pandemic fraud that we will continue to work alongside our law enforcement partners to ensure justice is served.”
“Zipora Hudson committed PPP loan fraud and is now paying the price for her crime,” said Assistant Special Agent in Charge Lisa Fontanette of the IRS Criminal Investigation Atlanta Field Office. “She is one of many individuals being held accountable for defrauding a program intended to assist small businesses economically survive the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Montreal Hudson was convicted alongside Zipora Hudson in the January jury trial, and he is set to be sentenced on June 26, 2025. Deandre Jones, also of Olive Branch, MS, previously pled guilty in the case.
The scheme was initially uncovered during the course of a civil investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Leary and Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Wright prosecuted the case on behalf of U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi. The case was investigated by the IRS Criminal Investigation Division along with investigators from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more information on the department’s response to the pandemic, please visit Justice.gov/Coronavirus and Justice.gov/Coronavirus/CombatingFraud.
Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline via the NCDF Web Complaint Form.
