A former film company executive from Beverly Hills pleaded guilty to federal bank fraud and money laundering charges stemming from his fraudulent acquisition of $1.7 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

William Sadleir, 67, entered the plea in United States District Court and faces a statutory maximum sentence of 50 years in federal prison. The former chief executive of Aviron Pictures admitted that he applied for and received $1.7 million in loans for Aviron entities during a period when the company was shuttered, authorities said.

Sadleir filed bank loan applications in 2020 for forgivable PPP loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. According to court documents, Sadleir obtained the loans for three Aviron entities by falsely representing that the money would be used for payroll expenses for 33 employees at each of the three companies. The companies were no longer operational, said authorities with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. Within days of the loans being provided on May 1, 2020, Sadleir transferred nearly $1 million to his personal checking account.

In his plea agreement with prosecutors, Sadleir admitted that he “expended a substantial amount of the fraudulent loan proceeds on utility bills, mortgage expenses and his personal attorney, among other things.” Sadleir also admitted in his plea agreement that he “did not use any of the fraudulent loan proceeds to pay employees of the Aviron companies.”

When the fraud was uncovered in late May 2020, federal agents seized $308,000 in fraudulent loan proceeds from an Aviron account, and Sadleir returned approximately $1.12 million to the bank that funded the loans. As a result of Sadleir’s fraudulent PPP loan scheme, the SBA suffered losses of $282,566. In his plea agreement, Sadleir agreed to pay full restitution, authorities said.

In January, Sadleir also pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges in a New York federal court for misappropriating more than $25 million that had been invested in Aviron. He is scheduled to be sentenced in the New York case on May 10. As part of his plea agreement with authorities in Los Angeles, prosecutors have agreed to ask that sentences in both cases run concurrently.

The case was investigated by the FBI, the SBA’s Office of Inspector General and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Office of Inspector General, which are part of the federal government’s COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force. Anyone with information about fraud involving COVID-19 loan programs is urged to call the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud Hotline at (866)720-5721, or visit justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.