Stephanie Hockridge, a former Phoenix news anchor-turned-fintech entrepreneur, has been convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a federal case involving hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID relief funds.
A jury in the Northern District of Texas found Hockridge guilty on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was acquitted on four additional counts of wire fraud. Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 10.
Hockridge’s conviction was announced on Friday.
According to federal prosecutors and investigative reports, Hockridge and her husband, Nathan Reis, fraudulently obtained over $300,000 in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans for themselves, including one application that falsely claimed he was a veteran and an African American.
The couple’s Scottsdale-based fintech firm, Blueacorn, which they co-founded in 2020, processed over $12.5 billion in PPP loans — with somewhere between $250 million and $300 million going to the company’s ownership, including Hockridge.
Blueacorn received over $1 billion in taxpayer-funded processing fees for facilitating PPP loans but spent less than 1% ($8.6 million) on fraud prevention and only $13.7 million on eligibility verification, according to a congressional investigation.
