Career and conviction
After earning his MBA at Columbia Business School, Blotnick was hired as an analyst by Citadel LLC in 2017 as part of a five-person team managing over $1 billion in gross market value. In 2019, at age 32, Blotnick founded New York-based Brattle Street Capital. The fund focused on small and mid-cap equities in the Consumer sector, and was named after the street Blotnick grew up on in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [11] [12] [9] [10] [13] [14]
In 2020, the fund suffered "steep losses," and between April 2020 and August 2020 Blotnick applied for five separate Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans where he falsified information about the number of employees, federal tax returns, and payroll documentation. In April 2021, Blotnick was arrested by the Manhattan District Attorney. [15] [16] [17] [7]
"As alleged, Mr. Blotnick repeatedly took advantage of a system intended to provide lifelines to small businesses and their employees during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic..."
On May 6, 2021, Federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Blotnick in the Federal District of New Jersey, [18] [19] which alleged that the funds were put into brokerage accounts with “nearly 45% of it going into losing stock trades,” stated U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger. [15]
In July 2021, Blotnick was charged with 33 counts of grand larceny and fraud. He was indicted in Manhattan Criminal Court and ordered to be held on $500,000 cash bail at Rikers Island. [17] [20] [21]
In October 2021, Blotnick pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges for submitting fraudulent loan applications as part of the March 2020 COVID-19 economic stimulus bill. [22] [23] His plea deal with federal prosecutors was for a term of imprisonment ranging from 70 to 87 months, based on the federal sentencing guidelines. [7]
Blotnick was sentenced to 51 months in prison for attempting to fraudulently obtain over $6.8 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. [2] [4] [5] [23] [24] [25] [26] U.S. District Judge Brian R. Martinotti also sentenced him to two years of supervised release and ordered restitution of $4.6 million. [15] In a parallel SEC administrative proceeding, Blotnick consented to $59,500 in disgorgement, settling the matter without admitting or denying the Commission's allegations. [27]
In 2024, Blotnick was released from FCI Coleman Low after serving two years in custody, with the remainder of his sentence to be completed on home detention. "It’s a surreal, crazy feeling to walk in there with absolutely nothing and then walk out years later the same way," stated Blotnick, who brought nothing home with him aside from two books: Plutarch's Moralia and Spinoza's Ethics. [7]
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