Stephanie Hockridge of ABC15: Sentence, Delay, and Reis Plea

Stephanie Hockridge, a former anchor at ABC15 in Phoenix, was convicted in June 2025 of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for her role in a scheme that pushed more than $65 million in fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loans through BlueAcorn, the fintech company she co-founded with her husband after leaving the station. A federal judge in Fort Worth sentenced her to ten years in prison and ordered her to pay over $63 million in restitution to the Small Business Administration.¹ She has not yet reported to prison.

From Phoenix Anchor Desk to Fintech Founder

Hockridge worked as a news anchor at ABC15, the Phoenix ABC affiliate, from 2011 to 2018.² The shows she anchored and the circumstances of her departure have not been publicly detailed. In April 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began, she and her husband Nathan Reis co-founded BlueAcorn.³

What BlueAcorn Did

BlueAcorn was a lender service provider that processed PPP loan applications on behalf of lending partners including Capital Plus Financial and Prestamos CDFI.⁴ Over the life of the program it processed at least $14 billion in loans and collected about $1 billion in processing fees in 2021 alone.⁵

According to federal prosecutors, Hockridge and her co-conspirators fabricated payroll records, tax documents, and bank statements to inflate applicants’ income and qualify them for larger loans than they were entitled to receive. The company ran a service called “VIPPP” in which recruited referral agents coached borrowers on submitting false information. Borrowers paid kickbacks calculated as a percentage of the loan funds they received, and BlueAcorn collected higher lender fees from the SBA on the inflated applications.⁶

A congressional investigation found that BlueAcorn spent less than one percent of its fee revenue on fraud prevention and that nearly half of the loans it processed carried fraud indicators.⁵ The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis reported that BlueAcorn’s ownership funneled roughly $300 million in profits to themselves and directed approximately $666 million to a marketing firm controlled by senior leadership.⁴

Indictment and Split Verdict

In November 2024, a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas indicted Hockridge and Reis on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and four counts of wire fraud.⁷ The case went to Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth.⁸

On June 20, 2025, a jury acquitted Hockridge on all four wire fraud counts but convicted her of the conspiracy charge.⁶ The jury found she had agreed to participate in the scheme but was not persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt on the specific wire fraud transactions charged.

Her defense team moved for a new trial, arguing the government had failed to disclose material evidence under Brady v. Maryland. The undisclosed material involved interviews with three government witnesses describing a separate PPP fraud conspiracy involving a person named Karnezis that predated Hockridge’s involvement with him. The defense argued this showed she had not knowingly joined the charged conspiracy and that the government’s own evidence pointed to multiple distinct conspiracies rather than one. Judge O’Connor denied the motion on November 20, 2025, finding the evidence had not been suppressed within the meaning of Brady and that it was not material enough to change the outcome. He reasoned that a separate 2020 conspiracy would not absolve her of participating in a different conspiracy in 2021, and that independent documentary evidence supported the verdict.⁹

Ten-Year Sentence

Judge O’Connor sentenced Hockridge on November 21, 2025, to ten years in federal prison and ordered her to pay over $63 million in restitution to the SBA, with liability shared jointly with her co-defendants.¹ After the hearing she was released on a GPS ankle monitor and ordered to surrender voluntarily to the Bureau of Prisons by December 30, 2025.³

Why She Is Still Out of Prison

Hockridge did not surrender on December 30. A federal judge granted an extension to January 30, 2026, so the court could weigh a request that she remain free pending appeal and a motion to stagger her sentence with her husband’s so both parents would not be incarcerated simultaneously.¹⁰

Additional extensions followed. As of June 2026, Hockridge remains out of custody on a GPS ankle monitor, her surrender date has been pushed to December 1, 2026, and her attorney is working to keep her free while an appeal of her conviction proceeds.¹¹

Nathan Reis’s Guilty Plea

Hockridge’s husband took a different route. Nathan Reis pleaded guilty on August 11, 2025, to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.¹² He was sentenced on December 18, 2025, also to ten years in prison, with two years of supervised release and over $66 million in restitution. He was ordered to surrender to the Federal Correctional Institution in Bastrop, Texas, by January 20, 2026.¹³ The Department of Justice said Reis and his co-conspirators had processed over 530 fraudulent loans causing more than $65 million in losses.¹⁴

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Co-Founder of Paycheck Protection Program Lender Service Provider Sentenced for COVID-19 Relief Fraud
2
ABC15 Arizona. Former Arizona News Anchor’s Trial Starts in PPP Loan Fraud Case
3
ABC15 Arizona. Ex-News Anchor to Be Sentenced Friday on Federal Conspiracy Charge
4
U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. How Fintechs Facilitated Fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program
5
Banking Dive. Fintechs BlueAcorn, Womply Added to House Panel’s PPP Probe
6
U.S. Department of Justice. Founder of Lender Service Convicted for Role in Multimillion-Dollar PPP Fraud Scheme
7
U.S. Department of Justice. Co-Founders of Paycheck Protection Program Lender Service Provider Charged in COVID-19 Relief Fraud
8
GovInfo. USA v. Reis et al, Case No. 4:24-cr-00287
9
GovInfo. Memorandum Opinion and Order, USA v. Reis et al
10
ABC15 Arizona. Judge Extends Voluntary Surrender Date for Former News Anchor in Federal PPP Fraud Case
11
ABC15 Arizona. Hockridge to Remain Out of Prison Until June
12
IRS Criminal Investigation. Founder of Lender Service Provider Pleads Guilty for Role in PPP Fraud Scheme
13
AZ Family. Husband of Ex-Phoenix News Anchor Sentenced to 10 Years in Loan Fraud Scheme
14
U.S. Department of Justice. Co-Founder of Paycheck Protection Program Lender Service Provider Sentenced for COVID-19 Relief Fraud