Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Mauricio Umansky denies that he and his company, The Agency, received unnecessary Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loans during the Covid pandemic. According to court documents, Mauricio and The Agency are calling the allegations “baseless.”
Relator LLC argued Mauricio and his partners received a total of $3.5 million in PPP and CARES Act loans they didn’t need.
But Mauricio argued that Relator is a “third party corporation formed by lawyers for a single purpose: to ‘whistle blow’ against entities and [to] profit … from actions against businesses to which it has no actual relationship.”
Mauricio Umansky’s attorney says Relator has no facts on The Agency
In court documents obtained by In Touch, Mauricio’s lawyer made the case that Relator is just making vague accusations and has no actual facts about their business. “Relator is in no way connected to Defendants,” he said. “[The LLC] was not previously employed by Defendants nor is it otherwise affiliated with Defendants. Relator therefore cannot … know firsthand the facts surrounding The Agency’s application for PPP loans.”
For his part, Mauricio believes the lawsuit is full of “speculation and absurd assertions.”
But Relator LLC maintains, “This is a case about greed during a national health emergency.”
Court documents explained that the PPP and CARES Acts were enacted to prevent the termination of employees during the pandemic. They were meant to preserve jobs, not the profits of businesses that had sufficient funds to pay them.
Relator claimed Mauricio applied for the loans knowing The Agency’s profits weren’t affected by average people struggling to stay afloat. Their revenue is based on a percentage of high-end real estate transactions, typically between millionaires and billionaires.
“In fact, The Agency’s business actually grew during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the suit declared. They added that The Agency’s $6 billion in sales in 2019 rose to $6.5 billion in 2020. It further “ballooned to $11.2 billion in 2021.”
The Agency didn’t need PPP to survive the pandemic
Since The Agency had adequate liquidity to pay their employees’ salaries, “The PPP Loans were not necessary to support Defendants’ … operations,” Relator claimed. “Instead, they only bolstered Defendants’ profits.”
The suit further argued that Mauricio and his business partners are all very wealthy people. They would have had no problem keeping The Agency afloat without applying for government loans.
In conclusion, Relator asked the court to enter judgment against the defendants. They asked for an amount equal to “three times the damages that the United States has sustained … plus a civil penalty of not less than $12,537 and not more than $25,076 for each and every false claim as required by law.”
A judge has yet to rule on the matter.
The lawsuit was filed in July 2023. That was the same month that Mauricio and his wife, Kyle Richards, split following 27 years of marriage. Mauricio also filed to place his father under a conservatorship this month
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 14 premieres November 19 at 8/7c on Bravo.
