From Trusted News Anchor to Federal Prison: How Stephanie Hockridge Engineered One of America's Largest PPP Frauds

Stephanie Hockridge

In early 2020, as millions of small businesses struggled to survive COVID-19 shutdowns, a familiar face in Phoenix TV news quietly stepped into the fintech world. Stephanie Hockridge — a polished, trusted former anchor known for delivering nightly broadcasts- reinvented herself as the co-founder of Blueacorn, a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) lender service provider built to help small businesses access desperately needed relief funds.

But behind the sleek fintech branding and promises to “streamline the process,” prosecutors say Hockridge and her husband, Nathan Reis, engineered one of the largest and most brazen PPP fraud schemes in the entire country. What began as a pandemic lifeline morphed into a fraud mill that pushed through more than $63 million in fake, inflated, or ineligible loans, ultimately sending Hockridge to federal prison for 10 years.

This is the story of how a mainstream news anchor transformed into the architect of a high-volume fintech fraud empire, and the cautionary tale the lending industry can’t afford to ignore.

The Rise of Blueacorn: A Fintech Rocketship Built on Sand

When PPP launched in April 2020, lenders were overwhelmed, banks were turning away small applicants, and millions of solo entrepreneurs couldn’t get anyone to process their applications. Into that chaos came Blueacorn, a fintech-style PPP loan gateway that promised speed, automation, and access to borrowers who had been shut out.

On the surface, Blueacorn looked like a classic pandemic-era success story: a digital interface that helped borrowers complete paperwork and get routed to partner lenders. The company processed loans at such an astonishing pace that at one point it facilitated more PPP loans than JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America combined, an unheard-of achievement for a brand-new operation.

But what lenders and regulators didn’t know yet was that Hockridge and Reis weren’t just operating fast, they were operating recklessly.

Behind the glossy interface, Blueacorn staff and contractors were:

• Creating false payroll records and tax documents

• Manipulating numbers to inflate loan sizes

• Coaching borrowers to “adjust” details to qualify

• Charging kickbacks tied directly to loan amounts

• Ignoring obvious red flags, missing documentation, and ineligible applicants

What should have been a digital bridge between borrowers and lenders instead became a conveyor belt of fraudulent applications.

VIPPP: When “Coaching” Turns Into a Criminal Enterprise

One of the most egregious parts of the scheme was a concierge-style add-on service created by Hockridge and marketed as VIPPP, a name as bold as the fraud behind it.

VIPPP wasn’t simply customer service. It was a fraud engine.

Borrowers were coached on:

• How to inflate payroll

• How to claim employee counts they didn’t have

• What revenue amounts to input

• How to “fill in the blanks” with made-up numbers when documents were missing

Investigators found cases where Blueacorn helped secure PPP loans for companies with zero employees, and in some instances, even falsified tax returns or bank statements to push approvals through.

The more inflated the loan, the more Blueacorn earned, and the more Hockridge and Reis pocketed personally.

A Billion-Dollar Funnel, a $63 Million Fraud

Blueacorn’s total loan funnel exceeded $1 billion, but federal investigators ultimately tied over $63 million in PPP loan fraud directly to the conspiracy led by Hockridge and Reis.

This wasn’t confusion, bad training, or pandemic chaos. It was a deliberate system designed to pump out massive numbers of applications, including thousands that should never have been approved.

Blueacorn rapidly became the poster child of fintech-fueled PPP risk. Congressional committees cited it in reports about PPP oversight failures. Regulators questioned how a young digital platform skyrocketed past major banks in loan volume. And prosecutors dismantled the false narrative that Blueacorn was just a victim of overwhelming demand.

It wasn’t overwhelmed, it was opportunistic.

Trial, Conviction, and a 10-Year Prison Sentence

In June 2025, a jury convicted Hockridge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Her husband, Reis, pled guilty shortly after, admitting his role in fabricating records and manipulating borrower data.

By November 2025, the sentence was handed down:

• 10 years in federal prison

• Over $63 million in restitution

• Two years of supervised release

The court recommended she serve her time at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, the same facility housing other high-profile inmates like Elizabeth Holmes and Ghislaine Maxwell. She was ordered to report by December 30.

For many observers, the sentencing became a symbolic bookend to the PPP fraud era, a loud message that high-volume fintech LSPs were not exempt from responsibility, and that personal enrichment at taxpayer expense would be met with severe punishment.

The Final Irony

Stephanie Hockridge spent years as a trusted voice delivering news to Arizona viewers. Her credibility was her currency. Audiences invited her into their homes, trusted her reporting, and relied on her to separate fact from fiction.

That trust, and the public profile it created, likely helped Blueacorn gain early traction. A fintech co-founded by a respected local news anchor? That sounds legitimate.

In court filings, Hockridge claimed that her actions were a "sincere effort to support small businesses" in dealing with government bureaucracy in an era of "unprecedented need".

The jury didn't buy it. Neither did the judge.

On December 30, 2025, Stephanie Hockridge will surrender to federal authorities to begin a decade behind bars. She'll be 52 when she's released, assuming good behavior.

Nathan Reis will follow, though his reporting date hasn't been set.

Their one-year-old son will grow up with both parents in federal prison for crimes committed while claiming to help people survive a pandemic.

From trusted news anchor to federal inmate. From entrepreneur to convicted fraudster. From processing $12 billion in loans to owing $63 million in restitution.

That's the story Stephanie Hockridge will never get to report.