Watchdog: U.S. Government Issued $5.4 Billion in ‘Potentially Fraudulent Pandemic Loans’Jordan Dixon-Hamilton 31 Jan 2023
The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), a federal watchdog overseeing pandemic-era spending, found that the U.S. government issued $5.4 billion in “potentially fraudulent pandemic loans,” according to a report released Monday.
PRAC identified 69,323 “questionable” Social Security Numbers in connection with the $5.4 billion in loans.
The report explained:
This Fraud Alert from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) identifies 69,323 questionable Social Security Numbers (SSNs) used to obtain $5.4 billion from the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (COVID-19 EIDL) program and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). These programs provided nearly $1.2 trillion in assistance to small businesses and their employees affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The committee’s team of data scientists cross-referenced data from more than 33 million EIDL and PPP loan applications to publicly available Social Security Administration (SSA) information before requesting more information from the SSA, who determined that 221,427 SSNs “were either not issued by SSA” or did not “match the name and/or date of birth information” provided by loan applicants.
The committee’s report tracked loans disbursed from April 2020 through October 2022.
The report said that the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) “initial approach to implement these programs quickly made billions of dollars available to millions of borrowers affected by the pandemic, but used few program controls to verify applicants’ eligibility prior to disbursing funds,”
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/01/31/watchdog-u-s-government-issued-5-4-billion-potentially-fraudulent-pandemic-loans/
