One of first COVID relief fraud trials ends with conviction of CLT restaurateur, son
Some of Tarik Freitekh’s last moments as a free man Thursday were chaotic ones.
Moments after a federal jury in Charlotte convicted the 34-year-old of helping steal $1.7 million in pandemic relief from taxpayers, prosecutors announced that they considered the Californian a flight risk who should be jailed until his sentencing.
At the defense table, a suddenly struggling Freitekh asked attorney Stephen Lindsay if he could take off his coat. Lindsay said his client’s arms were drenched with sweat. Freitekh reached for a bottle of water to drink, Lindsay said, but unintentionally doused himself instead.
Then Freitekh fainted, his head crashing onto the table in front of him.
“Someone call 911,” his wife shouted from the spectator gallery, according to people on hand.
Sitting nearby, Charlotte attorney Michael Greene said he saw Freitekh wobble in his chair and watched his eyes roll up into his head. “Is he still breathing?” Greene said he asked U.S. marshals.
From pix with Bieber to a Charlotte courtroom: Father, son charged with COVID fraud
Freitakh, after being treating by medics who rushed to the courtroom, recovered. But 30 minutes after his collapse, U.S. District Judge Frank Whitney ordered him held until his sentencing. That could be six months or more away.
The upheaval at the defense table brought a dramatic close to an 18-month investigation in which Freitekh and his father, well-known east Charlotte restaurateur Izzat Freitekh, were found guilty of bilking loans from the COVID-relief plan for small businesses, Paycheck Protection Program or PPP.
The six-day trial was one of first in the country involving pandemic-related financial fraud, a criminal epidemic that has siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars nationwide from government relief.
The younger Freitekh got the worst of the local verdict. He was convicted of bank fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and falsifying and concealing material facts. He faces a maximum combined sentence of more than 60 years in prison.
His father, owner of the popular Middle-Eastern eatery La Shish Kabob on North Sharon Amity Road, was found guilty of three counts of money laundering, money laundering conspiracy and one count of making false statements. Each bank fraud charge carries a maximum 10-year sentence. The jury found the elder Freitekh not guilty on several of the more serious charges directly tied to the conspiracy.
U.S. Attorney Dena King sounded almost biblical in her reaction to the verdict, accusing the Freitekhs of exploiting a national emergency.
“The wicked borrow and do not repay,” she said in a statement released after the trial, “but in the Freitekhs’ case they also lie to cover up the fraud.”
Rob Heroy, Izzat Freitekh’s co-counsel along with Greene, welcomed the jury’s decision not to convict his client of direct PPP fraud, but added: “It’s a very difficult time for the family, and he’s going to keep working at the restaurant every day as he always has to keep his life as normal at it can be.”
LIndsay, of Asheville, said Friday he did not intend to criticize the jurors but remained confused by their verdict. He said all of the PPP money in question had gone to the father’s businesses and none to Tariq, yet the son had been convicted of the more serious crimes.
“From what I could tell, the restaurant qualified to get PPP loans legitimately. Unless it was some Robin-Hood type thing it really makes no sense to get the loans fraudulently,” Lindsay told the Observer.
“I’d love to know what the jurors thought ... It’s just a real head-scratcher of a case.”
Prosecutor attacked as ‘racist’
The Freitekhs were arrested a week before Christmas in 2020. Their indictment claims Tariq filed multiple PPP loan applications for his father’s businesses, including La Shish Kabob, using exaggerated payroll and employment numbers. The federal government says it has reclaimed $1.3 million of what the father and son stole.
The case was highly unusual almost from the start. For months leading up to the trial, the Freitekhs’ original financial-crimes prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenny Sugar of Charlotte, was subjected to a stream of online attacks accusing her of being a racist who was unfair to La Shish Kabob.
Sugar eventually left the case. Lia Bantavani, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte declined to say why. But Bantavani said an investigation into what she described as “the misinformation campaign” targeting Sugar continues. Veteran attorneys say they’ve never seen a Charlotte prosecutor treated like that before.
In addition, when the government later accused the Freitekhs of filing fraudulent documents to bolster their defense, the government took the unusual step of subpoenaing the defendants’ attorneys at the time, Chris Fialko and Preston Odom, as prosecution witnesses. Though the lawyers were not accused of any wrongdoing, Whitney ordered them to testify. Both Fialko and Odom left the case.
“This damn thing got crazy as hell,” Greene said of the proceedings.
The Freitekhs offered a study in contrast. At one point in the trial, an investigator with the Internal Revenue Service said under oath how much he enjoyed the food at La Shish Kabob, a trial observer said.
On the day of his 2020 arrest, Izzat Freitekh expressed confidence in the outcome of his case. “We trust the courts. We trust the judges in Charlotte and all over the country,” he told the Observer on a phone call to his restaurant. “You should wait until the end of the story when the judge will say to me, ‘You were right. You are not guilty.’”
On Friday, after his conviction, Izzat Freitekh again answered the phone at La Shish Kabob. He begged off from commenting until he talked to his attorneys. But he added, “I respect what happened.”
Online reports describe Tariq as a Los Angeles-based businessman and producer with a $7 million home and a lineup of fancy cars. In various photos, he is shown shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Justin Bieber and Sofia Vergara.
Just before 4 p.m., a new photo joined his online gallery. Tariq Freitekh had been booked into the Mecklenburg County jail.
