An American Railroading: The Case of Christopher and Erin Mazzei

The Mazzeis deserve to have their case overturned as an example of prosecutorial abuse...

The widespread abuse of PPP loans, issued as the COVID-19 crisis was being orchestrated, has been a particularly egregious case showing the futility of government altruism. Because of the humiliating results of the program, the feds have had to invent scapegoats, like California-based entrepreneurs Christopher and Erin Mazzei, to save face.

Christopher Mazzei was sentenced to 36 months of imprisonment while his wife Erin was sentenced to 27 months of imprisonment for supposed wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy for receiving a PPP loan to fund an entertainment project in Hawaii. The case was plagued with prosecutorial abuses because of the agenda of Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregg Yates and his mandate to get headlines that would show that the government was getting tough after a humiliating lack of oversight in the PPP loan program.

The PPP loan scandal featured countless offenders who registered obvious scam LLCs to blatantly defraud the government. A popular thread on X shows different entities, such as Dodge Hellcat LLC, Reparations for Indigenous People LLC, Traffic Tickets LLC, Free Money LLC, Lobster LLC, F*ck the System LLC, Rent LLC, I Got Lunch LLC, and Lobster LLC, that were created for the purposes of abusing the PPP loan system. In response to their own futility, the feds unfairly singled out the Mazzeis and made an example of them to feign they were cleaning up the system when they were sweeping the corruption under the drug.

ATTORNEY YATES’ KANGAROO COURT

The case against Chris and Erin Mazzei was plagued with prosecutorial abuses from the start. Federal agents seized the Mazzeis’ accessible assets prematurely in May 2021, nearly a year before any charges were filed in May 2022, violating a requirement to file charges within 90 days or return assets. This included placing a lis pendens, a public notice that a particular property has a claim against it, on the Mazzei family home that was purchased three years before COVID-19 occurred as part of the plan to squeeze the Mazzeis and coerce them into entering into a plea agreement.

The Mazzeis came onto the feds’ radar because of a misunderstanding. In the early days of the PPP loan free-for-all, the requirements to receive the loans were vague and people were scrambling to understand the program due to the frenzied nature of the crisis. The Mazzeis obtained advice from the loan originator indicating it was proper to use payroll projections for the PPP loan application as is similarly done when applying for an SBA loan. Ultimately, it was determined that the loan originator’s guidance was incorrect. However, this context was barred from the court room as Attorney Yates, with the assistance of District Judge J. Michael Seabright, was intent upon engineering a catastrophic outcome for the couple to capture headlines.

Additionally, Mazzei had history in developing entertainment content before, previously directing and producing several feature films. When he signed up for the PPP loan to help finance his latest project Ohana, he was quickly able to produce a high-quality trailer for the Hawaii-based crime drama that showed promise. However, as Attorney Yates was stacking the deck against the Mazzeis, investors and actors were scared away from the project, and it was ultimately doomed to failure. Instead of creating jobs and spurring investment with the loan, the feds essentially quashed the effort and any economic gains along with it in an example of how the government destroys productive behavior.

As the throes of the cruel process were waged, the Mazzei family was effectively bled dry. Having already paid back most of the PPP loan and put into severe monetary distress due to mounting court bills, they decided to take a plea agreement. Sensing he had the Mazzeis right where he wanted them, Attorney Yates fashioned the deal to further restrict their rights. The plea deal banned any negotiations and prevented the Mazzeis from arguing for a reduced sentence, a particularly irregular and improper action. Although the Mazzeis were first-time, nonviolent, non-drug-related offenders, that did not stop the feds from twisting the knife in as deep as possible to destroy this family. Erin Mazzei is still behind bars, ripped away from her two young children, where she fears for her safety.

It is typical of the federal government to treat people who have done nothing wrong, pose no threat to society, and perhaps only made a slight innocent mistake as if they are capital criminals while letting others free who commit heinous offenses.

After allowing blatant fraud to persist in the PPP program due to incompetence and perhaps malice, the feds came after the Mazzeis so they could present their scalps to the public and falsely claim that they are concerned about combating abuses of the system when nothing could be further from the truth.

The Mazzeis deserve to have their case overturned as an example of prosecutorial abuse and the type of “justice” that has caused much-deserved extreme distrust in federal law enforcement.