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Law360 (December 14, 2020, 11:02 PM EST) -- A 35-year-old Atlanta man on Monday admitted to faking a positive case of COVID-19, a move that prompted his Fortune 500 company to shut down its facility for cleaning and pay its employees for the time they missed work, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Santwon Antonio Davis falsely claimed to have contracted the virus in March and submitted a falsified medical record to his company, prosecutors said. The company spent about $100,000 on sanitizing and compensating employees as a result of his false COVID-19 report, they claimed.
The company wasn't named in court documents, but the affected facility was in Atlanta. On Monday, Davis pled guilty to wire and bank fraud in Georgia federal court.
While investigating the COVID-19 case, prosecutors also uncovered an earlier incident in which Davis lied about having a child who had died so he could take bereavement leave.
"This child never existed and was fabricated so that the defendant could obtain benefits to which he was not entitled," the DOJ said in a statement Monday.
On top of that, Davis submitted a fraudulent mortgage application that included falsified earnings and employment history while on pretrial release, prosecutors said. The mortgage company discovered the fraud after seeing news reports on Davis' COVID-19 fraud charges, they said.
According to the complaint filed in May, Davis told his employer on March 19 that he received a telephone call informing him that his mother had tested positive for COVID-19, according to the complaint. Although Davis's supervisor told him that he could continue working, because it was a "low risk" exposure, Davis clocked out early, because he said he was worried about his mother, prosecutors said.
Days later, Davis texted his supervisor that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and later sent an email to his employer with a letter indicating he had been admitted to Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center Hospital South on March 20, according to the complaint. The complaint added that the email was an interstate wire communication, because it traveled through at least Iowa and Kansas before reaching the company's email servers in Pennsylvania.
The letter also apparently said that Davis should be quarantined for 14 days and avoid all contact with people, if possible. The letter did not indicate that Davis had been treated for or diagnosed with COVID-19, and no test results were included in the email, according to the complaint.
A member of the company's human resources team thought the letter included "some indicia of fraud," including that it stated Davis was discharged in November — months before the purported admission date — as well as being unsigned and not on any formal letterhead. A call placed to the Wellstar facility by a company representative revealed the facility was not conducting COVID-19 tests, according to the complaint.
U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak said in a statement Monday that Davis "caused unnecessary economic loss to his employer and distress to his co-workers and their families."
Counsel for Davis didn't immediately return a request for comment late Monday.
The government is represented by Sarah E. Klapman of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia.
Davis is represented by Kimberly Sharkey of the Office of the Public Defender.
The case is USA v. Santwon Antonio Davis, case number 1:20-cr-00476, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia,
--Additional reporting by Craig Clough. Editing by Haylee Pearl.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
