CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A Charlotte company will pay more than $1 million to settle claims it falsely obtained a loan from the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program. The U.S. Justice Department says Okaya Shinnichi Corporation of America, which makes steel tubing, pretended to be a small business wit h less than 300 employees. Instead, the government says the company is a U.S. subsidiary of two Japanese corporations and was not eligible for the second-round PPP loan it received, which totaled nearly $500,000. ...read more read less