A Florida man, who the U.S. Department of Justice has said is also a Canadian citizen, has been sentenced to jail time, years after he and his father were indicted in a fraudulent scheme to obtain millions of dollars in COVID relief loans from the U.S government.
Evan Edwards, a pastor, and his son, Josh Edwards, 35, were arrested in late 2022 on conspiracy to commit bank fraud and for using a portion of the proceeds obtained to make a down payment on a multi-million-dollar home in the Four Seasons Private Residence community at Walt Disney World Resort, a 2021 DOJ news release says.
On Tuesday, a Florida judge sentenced Josh Edwards — who had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud — to four years and three months in prison, according to court documents obtained by Global News.
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A Canadian citizen, like his father, Edwards is likely to be deported to Canada after his prison term, his lawyer, Andrew Searle, told NBC News, saying he “doesn’t see any scenario” in which Josh isn’t deported after his sentence is completed.
His father’s charges were dropped by a magistrate’s court judge in March 2025, the outlet added, after they determined he was unfit to stand trial due to a dementia diagnosis and other cognitive deficiencies.
Josh Edwards was deemed fit to stand trial, the U.S. outlet said, noting his mother had stated he has autism and learning difficulties.
Christian missionaries who ran the faith-based organization Aslan International Ministry, through which they attempted to embezzle funds, the Edwards worked in Turkey for more than two decades before moving to Canada and eventually settling outside Orlando, Fla., in 2019, The Guardian reported at the time of the crime.
In April 2020, Josh Edwards submitted a fraudulent loan application to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) under the pretense that the family business had almost 500 employees on payroll and over $2 million in average monthly expenses, according to the DOJ; numbers it said were “significantly overstated.”
Alarm bells rang when federal investigators arrived at the ministry’s office in Orlando to find it shuttered. They later found out that the accountant who purportedly signed off on the loan application had dementia and had not worked for the ministry for several years, NBC News wrote in an earlier 2022 report.
While the case garnered significant media attention when it first came to light, there have been multiple similar cases involving COVID-19 relief funds.
By March 2021, the Justice Department had charged 474 defendants with criminal offences based on fraud schemes connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“These cases involve attempts to obtain over $569 million from the U.S. government and unsuspecting individuals through fraud and have been brought in 56 federal districts around the country,” it wrote in a news release at the time, before warning that people who tried to take advantage would be brought to justice.
“To anyone thinking of using the global pandemic as an opportunity to scam and steal from hardworking Americans, my advice is simple – don’t,” then-acting assistant attorney general Nicholas L. McQuaid of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said.
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