Nikenson Jean Mathurin

Introduction

Nikenson Jean Mathurin, also known as “Nik Mathurin” and “Jean Mathurin,” is a 46-year-old man from Sparta, New Jersey, who used stolen identities of paper businesses to take more than $2.1 million in federal COVID-19 relief money — and then fought the charges at trial and lost. From April 2020 onward, Mathurin submitted fifteen fraudulent PPP and EIDL loan applications on behalf of businesses he claimed to own, padding payroll figures, gross revenue, and employee counts and attaching fake tax and payroll documents. A federal jury in Trenton convicted him in May 2026 after a four-day trial, and on October 28, 2026, he was sentenced to 78 months in prison and ordered to pay $2,131,747 in restitution.

Background Information

The scheme exploited the emergency funding Congress authorized in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed small businesses to draw on federal relief programs — the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program — to keep businesses afloat and employees on payroll. Mathurin posed as the owner of multiple such businesses and filed fifteen applications across the programs. His case was prosecuted under the District of New Jersey’s COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Strike Force, one of five nationwide strike forces the Justice Department established to pursue large-scale, multi-state pandemic relief fraud, and was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation under Special Agent in Charge Jenifer L. Piovesan. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Stark and Fatime Meka Cano of the office’s Criminal Division in Newark represented the government.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted by a jury and sentenced. Nikenson Jean Mathurin was convicted at trial of three counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering and was sentenced to 78 months in prison with $2,131,747 in restitution.

Mathurin’s applications were built on false data from the ground up. Each of the fifteen PPP and EIDL applications contained false information about the applicant entities’ average monthly payroll, gross revenue, and number of employees, supported by fake tax documents and payroll records. The result was more than $2.1 million in federal COVID-19 emergency relief funds paid out to him on the strength of businesses that existed, in the shape he presented them, only on paper. The fraud began no later than April 2020, in the first wave of pandemic relief, and ran across the programs’ lifetime.

Unlike most pandemic-fraud defendants, Mathurin took his case to a jury. The four-day trial in May 2026 before U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp in Trenton ended in convictions on three counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering. At the October 28, 2026, sentencing, the court imposed 78 months in prison — six and a half years — followed by three years of supervised release, and entered a restitution order of $2,131,747, matching the funds the scheme obtained. The verdict converted what had been a contested case into a fully adjudicated record: fifteen applications, fake supporting documents, and $2.1 million gone from the relief programs, proven to a jury’s standard.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer, whose office credited IRS Criminal Investigation and emphasized the institutional response: the District of New Jersey’s COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Strike Force, the Justice Department’s new National Fraud Enforcement Division, and the National Center for Disaster Fraud hotline that solicits pandemic-fraud reports from the public. The release also records the defense side of the ledger — Serguel Akiti, Esq. represented Mathurin — but the trial outcome left no contested facts standing. The consequences are the sentence, the supervised-release term, and the restitution debt, which together reclaim the relief money in name even if never in full.

Current Status

Mathurin is a sentenced federal inmate. The judgment rests on the May 2026 jury verdict — guilty on three wire-fraud counts and one money-laundering count — and the October 28, 2026, sentence of 78 months imposed by Judge Shipp, plus three years of supervised release and $2,131,747 in restitution. The case was announced from Newark as a strike-force prosecution, one of the five federal COVID-fraud strike forces’ results. There is no parole in the federal system, so the six-and-a-half-year term runs at good-conduct-adjusted rates, and the restitution obligation survives custody. The release reports no appeal as of sentencing.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Mathurin’s choice to go to trial rather than plead cost him the discount a plea would have carried and gave the government a jury verdict instead of a paper conviction. At 46, his 78-month term takes him into his fifties in federal custody, followed by supervised release and a seven-figure restitution order. The fake payroll records, inflated employee counts, and fabricated tax documents he filed are preserved in the public record as the anatomy of the fraud, and his case now sits among the DOJ strike-force results used to describe the federal crackdown on pandemic relief theft. For the relief programs’ intended recipients — the small businesses keeping employees on payroll — his fifteen applications are a case study in what the strike forces were built to catch.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of New Jersey, “Sussex County Man Sentenced to 78 Months in Prison for $2.1 Million COVID-19 Fraud Scheme,” November 2026. source