A U.S. man has been charged with fraud after being accused of trying to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of “nonexistent” personal protective equipment (PPE) to the federal government in a bid to profit from the coronavirus pandemic, according to law enforcement officials.
The Georgia man, Christopher Parris, was arrested Friday and charged with wire fraud by a federal court in Washington. Parris, a 39-year-old from Atlanta, was accused of making “a series of fraudulent misrepresentations” in order to secure orders from the Department of Veterans Affairs for 125 million face masks and other PPE totaling over US$750 million, a statement from the U.S.