This article highlights how easy it really is to find those who may have committed COVID-19 Relief fraud and several techniques that the government can and probably is using to find those who committed fraud from the pandemic funding programs.
EIDL
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Over the last year, we have written extensively at the breadth of fraud associated with the Federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Programs during the COVID-19 Pandemic. In recent weeks, the US Small Business Administration Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a scathing report of the performance of the US SBA during the COVID-19 Pandemic and its attention to fraud during the PPP program. Not only are some small business owners and some lenders to blame for fraud, so is the US Small Business Administration. Clearly, they failed to adequately do their part in preventing fraud, ultimately leading to what some have called the biggest fraud in the history of the United States.
In recent weeks, I have been writing about how some small business owners took advantage of the generous funding to help small businesses during the height of the pandemic (The Zeroes of the Pandemic). Each day, more and more light is being shed about those who have defrauded our nation with EIDL or PPP fraud and again, I wanted to share more examples of what some people tried to get away with that in essence, shut out many of our clients and small business owners who deserved PPP or EIDL funds. In most cases, their actions made it easy for the government to catch.
From April 2020 to December 2021 over $1.2 Trillion was delivered to small businesses in the form of the Payroll Production Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans. While many small business owners benefitted from PPP and EIDL, many small business owners provided information to banks and the SBA which were inaccurate and in many cases, purposely fraudulent. This article reviews current oversight efforts and actions by the Department of Justice for those who submitted inaccurate or fraudulent information to get funded. We highlight several cases where small business owners committed fraud.