Lawrence Mayor Brian DePeña was arrested Friday on federal wire fraud and money laundering charges over allegations that he used about $1.5 million in pandemic relief funds for campaign costs and personal debts. The FBI took him into custody, and he was due to appear later Friday in US District Court in Boston.
That is the point at which the case became public and immediate. DePeña, 61, was no ordinary borrower: prosecutors say he was a sitting mayor who had applied in 2020 and 2021 for Economic Injury Disaster Loans for Tenares Tire Services Inc., a Lawrence business he owned, while businesses were told the loans were only for working capital to ease pandemic hardship.
Prosecutors say the money moved quickly once it landed. On Aug. 16, 2021, $350,000 in relief funds was electronically deposited into the Tenares Tire bank account, which had been down to $20.23. Soon after, they allege, DePeña paid $85,000 to the IRS to cover personal tax debts, transferred $120,000 to a personal account and then used $90,000 of that money to write checks to The Committee to Elect Brian DePena.
The scale of the loan grew later that year. In late 2021, the federal government approved a modification that increased the loan by more than $1.5 million, bringing the total to $1.65 million. Prosecutors say DePeña used more than $42,000 for his mayoral campaign and $883,293 for mortgages on properties he owned in Lawrence. He was first elected mayor in November 2021 and reelected last November, even as investigators now allege the relief money was being steered toward campaign and personal spending.
That contradiction sits at the center of the case. The relief program was meant to keep struggling businesses afloat, but prosecutors say DePeña treated it as a source of cash for debts he already had and political activity he was trying to fund. In court records, they say he was also pressing his accountant by text in July 2021 while waiting for one part of the funds, including a message on July 22 that read, “Brother, call me, I’m in trouble,” and another saying he did not have time to wait for the loan.
What happens next is now a court matter, not a political one. DePeña’s initial appearance in US District Court in Boston later Friday is the first step in a federal case that, if the allegations hold, will test whether a mayor who won office twice can explain why pandemic aid intended for business survival became part of a campaign and personal-finance trail.
