FCC Lifeline Suspension Letters to Icon, PSPS Owner To Be in Federal Register

FCC Enforcement Bureau letters notifying Icon Telecom and Oscar Enrique Perez-Zumaeta of their suspension from participating in the Lifeline USF program are to be published Thursday in the Federal Register, said two FR notices including the letters (here and here) posted Wednesday. The letters, which also give notice of the commencement of debarment proceedings against Icon and Perez-Zumaeta, were dated May 26 and June 8, respectively, and released at the time by the FCC (see 1505260027 and 1506080067), but the parties have 30 days to contest the suspensions upon receipt of the letter or publication of the suspension in the Federal Register, whichever comes first. Icon, a Lifeline participant, pleaded guilty "to knowingly making a false statement to the Universal Service Administrative Company through its submission of 58 fabricated customer recertification forms," the bureau said in its letter notifying Icon. In April, Wes Yui Chew, president and owner of Icon, was ordered to serve four years in federal prison and pay a fine of $117,166 after pleading guilty to money laundering for transferring $20.5 million from an Icon bank account to his own, "despite knowing that Icon had thousands fewer customers than it reported to the Commission," said the bureau in a separate letter notifying Chew of his own suspension (which was not part of Wednesday's FR notices). Chew also agreed to forfeit $27 million seized during a Department of Justice investigation. Perez-Zumaeta owned and managed PSPS Sales, which recruited low-income people to apply for Lifeline-supported phone services through Icon. He pleaded guilty to money laundering for depositing a $52,390 check from Icon into a PSPS bank account "despite knowing that more than $10,000.00 of those funds was the result of criminal fraud against the Commission," the bureau said in its letter to Perez-Zumaeta.