On Friday, a Fort Worth, Texas, judge sentenced Stephanie Hockridge, 42, a popular KNXV anchor turned “entrepreneur,” to 120 months in the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas. Some convicts, however, can shorten their time by being model prisoners.
The convicted former television presenter will join at least two other high-profile criminals housed there when she reports to the facility on December 30.
The minimum-security federal facility is the current home of Jeffrey Epstein collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell, biotech company fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, and Real Housewives reality star and wire fraudster Jen Shah.
Shah, however, will reportedly be released from the lockup on December 10, before Hockridge arrives.
The judge also ordered Hockridge, who anchored the news at the ABC affiliate for seven years, to pay nearly $64 million in restitution and serve supervised release for two years following her prison term.
A jury in June found Hockridge guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud but also acquitted her on four separate accounts of wire fraud.
Hockridge and her husband, Nathan Reis, founded a company in April 2020 called BlueAcorn to ostensibly help small businesses and people access the popular federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans during the downturn caused by the COVID pandemic.
Federal prosecutors alleged the couple faked “payroll records, tax documents and bank statements” to get larger loans for certain PPP applicants. Then, they charged borrowers a kickback based on a percentage of the loans funded, according to court documents.
In total, the Scottsdale company processed more than $63 million in bogus PPP loans, according to federal prosecutors.
Hockridge, who was also a former reporter for CBS radio in London, claimed that her actions were a “sincere effort to support small businesses” in dealing with the government bureaucracy in an era of “unprecedented need,” according to the New York Post.
But a congressional inquiry reportedly found that BlueAcorn often failed to properly vet applicants and charged success fees to borrowers, which violated Small Business Administration rules.
In December of 2018, her ABC affiliate marked the anchor’s departure from the station with the headline, “Thank you! Stephanie Hockridge marks last day ABC15.”
In August, Reis, 47, agreed to a plea of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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