A North Berwick man has pleaded guilty to a federal fraud charge for applying for pandemic relief funds for a travel agency he no longer owned.

Frederick Avery, 49, received over $200,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program to help his business, Superior Cruise and Travel LLC, recover from the pandemic.

But Avery didn’t own the business. He sold it to a limited liability company in Pennsylvania in November 2019, months before the pandemic hit the United States, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Green.

Avery faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.

A pandemic relief program operated by the Small Business Administration, the Paycheck Protection Program provided forgivable loans to small businesses to be used for rent, utilities, payroll and other business expenses.

Avery filed two applications for these funds between April 2020 and September 2021.

He claimed he was the sole owner of Superior Cruise and Travel LLC and that he needed the money – which added up to $215,000 – for payroll, lease or mortgage interest, utilities and other items, according to court documents.

In the first application, Avery claimed the business had seven employees. In the second, he claimed 27.

He submitted falsified bank statements from a non-existent TD Bank account.

Thousands of small businesses around the country were awarded PPP loans from 2020 to 2021, totaling about $800 billion.

In Maine, those loans covered more than a quarter million jobs by the end of 2020. The state’s small businesses received over $3 billion.

Avery is one of six Mainers found guilty of fraudulently applying for PPP loans, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, cumulatively defrauding the Small Business Administration out of more than $2 million.

Nationally, the Small Business Administration’s inspector general estimates that PPP loan fraud totaled about $64 billion.

In October, Mark X. Haley, of Rockport, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for what prosecutors said was “the largest heist from any (Paycheck Protection Program) fraud case yet prosecuted in the District of Maine.” Haley received over $1 million from 12 fraudulent loan applications in which he fabricated small businesses and employees.

Last year, Jacob Hennie, a former UMaine football player, agreed to pay nearly $230,000 to settle a charge for PPP fraud. Hennie allegedly obtained two PPP loans for just under $40,000 after falsely claiming he operated a business with nine employees. Federal law allows the United States to seek three times the amount of damages, plus a civil penalty.

In 2022, Nathan Reardon, of Skowhegan, was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison after prosecutors say he applied for over $240,000 worth of PPP loans using false employee wage information and using companies that had no active business operations or workers.

Craig Franck, of Levant, was sentenced to 33 months in 2023 after prosecutors say he received more than $320,000 in loans for two companies that were no longer in business or had no employees by 2020.

In May, Merton Weed Jr., of Norway, was sentenced to two years in prison after applying for over $240,000 in PPP loans using false payroll and employee information.