Florida pastor and son’s $8 million Covid fraud case comes to bizarre end

It was one of the strangest Covid fraud cases brought by the Justice Department, with the kind of wild details that seemed ripped from a Hollywood script.

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There was an $8.4 million pandemic relief loan based on records purportedly signed by a dementia-stricken accountant. Bags of shredded documents were discovered in a Mercedes SUV. Cellphones were found inside pouches specially designed to block radio frequencies to keep them from being tracked. And there were allegations of faked mental health problems that recalled the notorious case of mobster Vincent “The Chin” Gigante.

At the center of it all was a supposed man of God — a Florida-based pastor with an unusual past, who is alleged to have run a sham ministry.

The pastor, Evan Edwards, and his son, Josh, were arrested in late 2022 on charges of fraudulently obtaining millions in Covid relief aid and trying to use some of the money to buy a luxury home near Walt Disney World.

But their lawyers struggled to communicate with them from the start, and multiple psychiatrists were brought in to examine whether they were truly suffering from mental health problems or were feigning symptoms to avoid a possible prison term.

More than three years later, the case has finally come to an end.

A judge sentenced Josh Edwards, 35, to four years and three months in prison Tuesday. Josh, a Canadian citizen like his father, is likely to be deported following his prison term, his lawyer said. He had previously pleaded guilty to two fraud counts.

There will be no plea deal or sentencing for the elder Edwards. Charges against Evan were dropped in March 2025 when it was determined that he was incompetent to stand trial. He was suffering from “moderate to severe dementia and significant and permanent cognitive deficits,” as well as a host of physical issues, a magistrate judge said in court papers.

Josh Edwards, on the other hand, had been ruled competent even though his mother said he has autism and a learning disability and that he had “no real friendships and spent all of his time with his family,” according to court papers filed by his lawyer.

In seeking a lighter sentence, Josh’s attorney, Andrew Searle, had portrayed him as a fall guy for his family. Searle said in court papers that it was his father who started and operated their ministry, ASLAN International, and that his sister, Joy, and mother, Mary Jane, controlled the accounts the ill-gotten loan money was transferred into.

“Given his lack of maturity and his dependency on his family, it is clear that [Josh Edwards] acted at the instruction and direction of others when he sought and signed for the PPP loan in this case,” Searle said in court papers, in which he noted that the government had recommended a sentence of 36 months, which is the equivalent of time served.

After the sentence was issued, Searle told NBC News that he was disappointed the judge went beyond what the government had asked for.

“I was hoping we could walk out of the courtroom knowing that he was at least done with his sentence,” Searle said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Alan Heringa, one of Evan’s cousins, said the case shocked his extended family in Canada.

“His whole life was devoted to the church,” Heringa said. “To scam the government, it’s just unbelievable.”

“I can see his father rolling in his grave,” Heringa added.

Cracking the case

The Covid pandemic was raging in the spring of 2020 when Congress passed a law that, among other things, provided aid to small businesses and organizations through the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. But in the ensuing months and years, it became evident that the loan program was a magnet for fraudsters, resulting in one of the greatest grifts in U.S. history.

More than $200 billion in Covid relief loans and grants was most likely doled out to fraudsters from March 2020 to January 2022, according to government reports.

Evan and Josh Edwards were among hundreds charged with defrauding the program. According to federal prosecutors, their scheme was set in motion within a year of the family’s relocating to the U.S.

The Edwardses did missionary work in Turkey for at least two decades before they moved to Canada and then to Florida in 2019. They settled in a newly built community in New Smyrna Beach, about an hour’s drive from Orlando.

In April 2020, Josh applied for a $6 million Paycheck Protection Program loan to cover payroll, rent and utilities for his family’s ministry. In the loan application, he claimed that the organization, ASLAN International Ministry, had 486 employees and a monthly payroll of $2.7 million, according to a federal forfeiture complaint .

ASLAN International was ultimately approved for an $8.4 million loan.

But when federal investigators showed up at the ministry’s office in Orlando, the door was locked, and workers at the neighboring businesses told them nobody was ever seen inside, the complaint says.

There were other red flags. The man who was listed on the loan application as the ministry’s accountant suffered from dementia and hadn’t done any work for the organization since 2017, federal prosecutors said in court papers, citing an interview with the man’s son.

Federal agents descended on the family’s home in September 2020, but no one was there, and the place had been “cleared out,” prosecutors said in court papers. Later that evening, however, Florida Highway Patrol officers spotted and stopped the Edwardses’ beige Mercedes.

Federal agents arrived and found bags of shredded documents in the vehicle, as well as suitcases full of financial records and their electronic devices stuffed into so-called Faraday bags, which block radio frequencies, according to the federal court papers.

Investigators managed to recover the $8.4 million provided to the Edwardses, including $868,000 that was set aside for the down payment on a 4,700-square-foot home in a new Disney World development called Golden Oaks.

But Evan and Josh weren’t arrested until December 2022, five months after an NBC News report raised questions about why they hadn’t been charged in the alleged scam.

Evan Edwards emerged from his home in a wheelchair and refused to attend a court hearing later that day, citing medical issues. Josh didn’t respond to any questions at his first court appearance, and the judge ordered a psychiatric exam. But then a prosecutor told the court that the agents who arrested him said he was “speaking and responding to them just fine.”

Those events set off years of effort to determine whether they were competent to stand trial.

At a hearing in January 2023, a judge said Evan was “ unable or unwilling ” to engage with a court-ordered psychiatrist who ultimately determined that he was unfit to stand trial. But the judge said there were questions over whether he was feigning illness.

“I know there’s a suggestion of potential malingering on some aspects, but there’s medical issues that are completely verifiable,” Magistrate Judge Leslie Hoffman Price said, according to a transcript obtained by NBC News at the time.

After two other psychiatrists determined that Evan was unable to proceed to trial, all charges were dropped last year.

Determining his son’s competency also turned into a slog. The first psychiatrist who examined Josh found his “presentation during the interview as suggestive of feigning” and “opined that [he] was not truly suffering from any mental disease or defect.”

A second psychiatrist offered a “tentative opinion” that he wasn’t competent to stand trial, but a third disagreed. And a federal officer who helped arrest Josh testified that he was able to communicate in an intelligible manner and respond appropriately to questions.

A judge ultimately ruled that Josh didn’t suffer from a mental disease or defect but that rather “he is malingering.”

By the time he arrived in court Tuesday, Josh Edwards had been in federal custody for 3½ years. His father, meanwhile, is at home in Florida being cared for by his wife and daughter, according to court papers filed by Searle, Josh’s lawyer.

Searle said he “doesn’t see any scenario” in which Josh isn’t deported after he serves out his sentence next year.

“My hope is that my client is able to put his life together after this whole ordeal,” he added.