The Last Vegas Trip

In the fall of 2021, Joshua White walked through the neon-lit corridors of a Las Vegas casino, flush with cash that wasn’t rightfully his. The 44-year-old from Yoe, Pennsylvania, had just withdrawn thousands from a bank account swollen with federal COVID relief funds—money meant to keep struggling businesses afloat during the darkest days of the pandemic. As slot machines chimed and cards shuffled around him, White was burning through $175,000 in fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program funds, oblivious to the federal investigation that would soon unravel not just his own scheme, but a sprawling family fraud operation worth more than $11.5 million.

The casino lights reflected a different kind of gamble than White imagined. He wasn’t just betting chips on blackjack tables—he was wagering his freedom on the assumption that no one would notice the phantom businesses, fabricated employees, and doctored documents that had funded his Vegas spree.

The Aluminum Empire

To understand Joshua White’s downfall, you first have to understand his father. Creed White, 67, had built Aluminum Alloys Manufacturing into a legitimate aluminum smelting and processing business in the small town of Yoe, Pennsylvania. The elder White was a businessman who understood the language of profit margins and industrial contracts, but when the pandemic hit in early 2020, he saw opportunity where others saw crisis.

Yoe, population barely 1,000, sits in York County, Pennsylvania—a place where manufacturing jobs have been the backbone of families for generations. When COVID-19 shuttered businesses and left workers unemployed, the federal government responded with unprecedented relief programs. The Paycheck Protection Program promised forgivable loans to help businesses keep employees on payroll. The Economic Injury Disaster Loan program offered lifelines to companies facing pandemic-related losses.

For Creed White, these programs weren’t relief—they were raw material for the largest fraud scheme the Middle District of Pennsylvania had ever prosecuted.

The Machinery of Deception

The scheme began legitimately enough. In early 2020, Aluminum Alloys Manufacturing received disaster loans as the pandemic ravaged the economy. But Creed White quickly realized the system’s vulnerabilities. Between spring 2020 and fall 2022, he would submit approximately 120 fraudulent applications for PPP and EIDL loans, creating a paper trail of phantom businesses that existed only in carefully crafted documents.

The operation required a team. Joseph Bailey, 54, of York, Pennsylvania, became the document forger, creating fraudulent business records, banking statements, and tax filings that would convince lenders these shell companies were legitimate. Kester Murray, 40, of Emigsville, Pennsylvania, helped fabricate the corporate paperwork that gave these ghost businesses the appearance of reality.

But Creed White needed someone he could trust absolutely—someone who shared his name and his blood. That’s where Joshua White came in.

Joshua’s role was particularly insidious: he became the identity thief of the operation. His job was to obtain personally identifying information from both willing and unwitting individuals whom his father would fraudulently represent as business owners. These weren’t just names on applications—they were real people whose identities became weapons in the White family’s war against the federal treasury.

Some victims knew their names were being used and received payment for their participation. Others discovered their involvement only when federal investigators came knocking, learning that businesses they’d never heard of were supposedly under their control, employing workers who didn’t exist, generating revenue that was pure fiction.

Eighteen Companies, Zero Employees

The scope of the fraud was breathtaking in its audacity. Creed White controlled 18 dormant businesses—companies that existed on paper but had no actual operations, no real employees, no legitimate business activities. Yet through the applications Joshua helped orchestrate, these phantom enterprises claimed to employ dozens of workers, generate substantial revenue, and desperately need federal assistance to survive the pandemic.

Approximately 40 of the 120 applications were approved. Each approval meant another deposit into bank accounts controlled by Creed White, another successful deception of the federal lending system designed to help legitimate businesses survive an unprecedented crisis.

The money—more than $11.5 million in total—flowed through a carefully constructed network of accounts. Creed White would transfer funds between different banks, obscuring the money trail while using the proceeds for unauthorized expenses and personal enrichment. The federal programs that were supposed to prevent mass layoffs and business closures instead funded the White family’s lifestyle and Joshua’s gambling addiction.

The $175,000 Side Hustle

While helping his father orchestrate the larger scheme, Joshua White ran his own parallel fraud. He submitted a fraudulent PPP loan application for a dormant business he owned, successfully obtaining $175,000 in federal funds. Unlike his father’s more elaborate money laundering operation, Joshua’s approach was almost reckless in its simplicity.

The money didn’t go toward keeping employees on payroll—there were no employees. It didn’t cover rent or utilities for a struggling business—there was no operating business. Instead, Joshua used the funds for unauthorized expenses and that fateful trip to Las Vegas, where federal dollars meant to preserve American jobs were fed into slot machines and lost at card tables.

The Las Vegas spending spree would later serve as a particularly damning piece of evidence at sentencing. While legitimate small businesses were closing permanently and real employees were losing their livelihoods, Joshua White was living it up in Sin City on money earmarked for pandemic relief.

The Investigation Begins

Federal investigators from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, the Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General, and the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General began focusing on Aluminum Alloys Manufacturing sometime in 2022. What started as routine oversight of pandemic relief programs quickly revealed a sophisticated fraud operation.

The paper trail was damning. Bank records showed the complex web of transfers between accounts controlled by Creed White. Application documents revealed the same businesses claiming different owners, the same addresses housing multiple companies, the same phone numbers serving dozens of supposedly independent enterprises.

Most telling were the employment records. The businesses claimed to have employees, but payroll records were fabricated. Tax documents showed no legitimate business activity. When investigators attempted to contact the supposed business owners, they found people who had never run the companies listed under their names.

As the investigation deepened, the full scope of the family operation became clear. This wasn’t a case of pandemic desperation leading to a single questionable loan application. This was systematic, premeditated fraud that treated federal relief programs as a personal piggy bank.

The Unraveling

By late 2022, the investigation had gathered enough evidence to begin making arrests. The fraud had been too large, too systematic, and too careless to remain hidden. Joshua White’s Las Vegas spending had left clear financial records. His father’s 120 loan applications had created a paper trail that investigators could follow like breadcrumbs.

One by one, the co-conspirators were arrested and charged. Joseph Bailey, the document forger, was the first to cooperate with authorities. Kester Murray, who had helped create the fraudulent business records, quickly followed. The evidence against the White family was overwhelming.

Faced with the prospect of a lengthy trial and the government’s mountain of evidence, all four defendants eventually pleaded guilty. The admission of guilt came too late to demonstrate true remorse—by then, millions in taxpayer funds had been stolen, and countless legitimate businesses had been denied assistance while the Whites’ phantom companies collected federal checks.

Justice in the Courtroom

U.S. District Judge Jennifer P. Wilson handled the sentencing for all four defendants, and her decisions reflected the varying degrees of culpability in the scheme. In October 2025, she sentenced the mastermind, Creed White, to 10 years in federal prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering—a sentence that would likely keep the 67-year-old behind bars for the remainder of his productive years.

Joseph Bailey, the document forger, received 46 months imprisonment for his role in creating the fraudulent paperwork that made the scheme possible. Kester Murray, whose involvement was more limited, was sentenced to two years of probation—a recognition that while he participated in the fraud, his role was significantly smaller than the others.

On February 10, 2026, Joshua White became the fourth and final defendant to learn his fate. Judge Wilson sentenced him to 96 months—eight years—in federal prison for bank fraud. The sentence reflected both his integral role in the identity theft aspect of the scheme and his separate fraudulent loan application.

But prison time was only part of the consequences. Judge Wilson also ordered Joshua White to pay more than $2.3 million in restitution to victims and serve five years of supervised release following his imprisonment. Combined with restitution orders for the other defendants, the court attempted to recover as much of the stolen $11.5 million as possible, though full recovery remained unlikely.

The Human Cost

The numbers tell only part of the story. Behind the $11.5 million in fraudulent loans were real consequences for real people. Legitimate small businesses that might have received assistance were denied because funds went to the Whites’ phantom companies instead. Taxpayers ultimately bore the cost of the fraud, subsidizing Joshua White’s Las Vegas gambling and his family’s unauthorized enrichment.

The individuals whose identities were stolen faced their own ordeals. Some discovered their names associated with businesses they’d never heard of, their personal information compromised, their reputations potentially damaged. Others who knowingly participated now faced the consequences of their cooperation with the scheme.

“These individuals deliberately and repeatedly defrauded the PPP and the EIDL programs, which were designed to help small business owners during the COVID pandemic,” said IRS-CI Philadelphia Field Office Special Agent in Charge Yury Kruty. “These sentencings should be a deterrent to other would-be criminals, knowing that Special Agents from IRS-CI and our law enforcement partners are fully committed to bringing offenders like this to justice.”

The Broader Pattern

The White family fraud was part of a much larger wave of pandemic relief fraud that swept across the country as criminals recognized the vulnerabilities in hastily implemented federal programs. The urgency of providing relief to struggling businesses during an unprecedented economic crisis created opportunities for fraud that sophisticated criminals like Creed White quickly exploited.

Amaleka McCall-Brathwaite, Special Agent in Charge of the Eastern Regional Office for the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General, noted that “when individuals manipulate pandemic relief programs for personal gain, they undermine public trust and divert critical resources from legitimate small businesses.”

The White case represented one of the largest PPP and EIDL fraud prosecutions in Pennsylvania’s Middle District, but it was far from unique. Across the country, federal investigators have been working to unravel similar schemes, recovering stolen funds and prosecuting those who treated crisis relief as an opportunity for personal enrichment.

Legacy of Deception

As Joshua White begins his eight-year federal prison sentence, the full consequences of the family fraud operation continue to ripple outward. The aluminum smelting business that once provided legitimate employment in Yoe, Pennsylvania, has been tainted by association with one of the state’s largest pandemic fraud schemes.

The case serves as a stark reminder of how quickly legitimate business operators can cross the line into criminal behavior when they perceive opportunity in crisis. Creed White had operated Aluminum Alloys Manufacturing as a legitimate business before the pandemic, but the availability of federal relief funds transformed him from a businessman into a criminal mastermind.

For Joshua White, the path from identity thief to Las Vegas high-roller to federal prisoner took less than two years. The money that funded his gambling spree was spent in hours, but the consequences will follow him for decades.

The Empty Slots

In the end, Joshua White’s Las Vegas gamble proved to be the ultimate losing bet. The slot machines that consumed his fraudulent PPP funds offered better odds than his scheme to defraud the federal government. The casino always wins, investigators always follow the money trail, and federal sentences always come due.

As he serves his 96-month sentence, Joshua White joins his father in federal prison, both men having traded their freedom for money that was never rightfully theirs. The phantom businesses they created have vanished, but the real consequences—for victims, for taxpayers, for the integrity of federal relief programs—remain.

The neon lights of Las Vegas have long since faded, but the judgment of the federal court will illuminate Joshua White’s path for years to come. Eight years in prison, five years of supervised release, and more than $2.3 million in restitution—the true cost of a $175,000 fraud that began with stolen identities and ended with federal prison cells.