This report is courtesy of Justthenews source and excerpts are being shown here. The way the Federal government is acting, it’s handing out free money to all kids of fraudsters, and most government agencies really don’t care, unless they oversee fraud cases. In one quote, “Last month, the Secret Service announced that some $100 billion had been stolen from COVID-19 relief funds due to fraudulent activity. That’s about 3% of the roughly $3.5 trillion that the government has so far spent in pandemic aid.”
Since COVID-19 hit the U.S. in early 2020, the federal government has created several initiatives to combat the devastating economic fallout of the pandemic. Due to lax oversight by several agencies at both the state and federal level, however, billions meant for alleviating Americans’ economic distress instead went to individuals who defrauded the government programs.
Much of the fraudulent activity occurred through the Small Business Administration (SBA), which is charged with overseeing several COVID-19 relief programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program (EIDL).
PPP provides forgivable loans to assist businesses during the pandemic, and EIDL provides accessible and borrower-friendly capital to nonprofits and small businesses recovering from the pandemic’s economic impacts.
While PPP helped many businesses survive during the pandemic, it was also riddled with fraud. About 15% of the $961 billion that the Congress appropriated in total for PPP is projected to have been obtained fraudulently, according to one study.
A House panel estimated that some $84 billion in PPP loans was issued fraudulently. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis found last year that less than 1% of the money was forfeited or seized by the Justice Department.
“The SBA takes fraud seriously, and, as such, all applicants are required to provide certification of their eligibility upon application,” an agency spokesperson told Just the News. “Misrepresentation of eligibility is unlawful, and, when appropriate, these cases are referred to the Office of the Inspector General. The Office of Inspector General and the agency’s federal partners are working diligently to resolve fraud incidents. The SBA encourages anyone suspecting fraud or misuse of relief programs to visit: sba.gov/fraud.”
The SBA also noted that, as of September, the agency had conducted more than 65,000 manual loan reviews to identify potential fraud, abuse, and other forms of noncompliance. About 5,000 of these reviews have been “dispositioned as Requiring Further Analysis due to potential fraud or ineligibility.”
The SBA isn’t the only government agency that’s paid out large sums of money in improper and fraudulent payments meant for COVID-19 relief.
The Labor Department, for example, did so in the form of billions of dollars in federal unemployment benefits, which went to ineligible recipients including prisoners and people with stolen identities.
This report is courtesy of Justthenews.com, read more here.