Ex-Top News Anchor Sentenced In Jaw-Dropping Scheme

Former Phoenix TV anchor Stephanie Hockridge is headed to federal prison after a jury found she helped loot a COVID-era loan program that was supposed to keep small businesses alive. The Justice Department said she will serve 10 years for her role in a massive scheme that siphoned off tens of millions in taxpayer-backed Paycheck Protection Program cash.

Newsweek said it reached out to her attorney after hours.

Her sentencing comes as authorities in the U.S. and abroad try to claw back money lost to pandemic fraud. Billions vanished as Washington scrambled to blunt the economic blow of the 2020 shutdowns. By late 2021, nearly $100 billion in relief funds had been stolen, much of it tied to unemployment and benefit scams.

Prosecutors said Hockridge, 42, and her husband, Nathan Reis, cooked up a company called Blueacorn in April 2020 to “help” small businesses secure PPP loans; but instead, they were gaming the system. From April 2020 to May 2021, the pair and their partners pushed through over $63 million in bogus applications, according to the DOJ.

“To get larger loans for certain PPP applicants, Hockridge and her co-conspirators fabricated documents, including payroll records, tax documentation and bank statements. Hockridge and her co-conspirators charged borrowers kickbacks based on a percentage of the funds received,” the department said. It added that “Hockridge and her coconspirators processed over $63 million in fraudulent PPP loans.”

A grand jury indicted Hockridge and Reis in November 2024 on conspiracy and wire fraud charges. A jury convicted her in June of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Hockridge was a familiar face to Phoenix viewers, anchoring for ABC15 from 2011 to 2018. The station reported that her defense team argued the government zeroed in on only a sliver of the loans tied to Blueacorn, roughly 20 borrowers out of hundreds of thousands. Her lawyers said they planned to appeal.

She had faced up to 20 years but will serve her sentence at the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas — the same facility that houses Ghislaine Maxwell, according to People magazine.

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