A new investigation sheds some light on the scale of fraud, theft, and waste resulting from the massive amounts of money poured into COVID-19 relief.
Much of the pilfering centered around the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), which injected more than a trillion dollars into the economy to prevent a freefall due to the unprecedented effects of the pandemic and lockdowns, per the AP.
U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro called the pandemic spending “the largest rescue package in American history” when he gave his perspective to Congress.
The SBA was expected to dole out the funds so fast that standard verification procedures were altered or dropped. Loan applicants were allowed to self-certify that their information was accurate, creating fertile ground for misrepresentation and outright fraud.
SBA estimates of fraud in the EIDL program are around $86 billion, with an additional $20 billion in fraud estimated from the PPP. Audit results that will be released shortly have been expected to estimate much higher figures.
A University of Texas at Austin study put the PPP fraud figure at five times the SBA’s initial estimate.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who was tasked with assessing the government’s pandemic response, told Congress the size of the fraud might exceed $100 billion.
Horowitz asserted that much of the theft could have been avoided if the government had checked borrowers against the Treasury Department’s list of those who are ineligible due to being debarred contractors, criminals, or tax frauds.
The other major source of fraud during the pandemic was unemployment compensation. The federal government sent hundreds of billions directly to the states to staunch the bleeding of a jobless rate that reached double digits.
Fraudulent claims were paid to the tune of $76 billion, according to U.S. Department of Labor Inspector General Larry Turner. An additional $115 billion was apparently mistakenly distributed to ineligible people.
Among the federal legislators charged with oversight of these programs, Republicans and Democrats apparently disagree on whether the spending initiatives were worth the losses to theft and fraud. However, the two sides agreed to extend the statute of limitations to prosecute SBA program fraud from five years to 10.