U.S. watchdog identifies $5.4 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID-19 loans

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. government
likely awarded about $5.4 billion in COVID-19 aid to people with
questionable Social Security numbers, a federal watchdog said in
a report released on Monday.

The watchdog, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee
(PRAC), said it “identified 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).”

The loans were disbursed between April 2020 and October
2022, the watchdog said in its report, which comes ahead of a
scheduled Wednesday hearing by the Republican-led House of
Representatives Oversight Committee on fraud in pandemic
spending.

The United States is probing many fraud cases pegged to U.S.
government assistance programs, such as the Paycheck Protection
Program, unemployment insurance and Medicare. In May 2021,
Attorney General Merrick Garland launched a COVID-19 Fraud
Enforcement Task Force.

Last year, the U.S. Justice Department tapped federal
prosecutor Kevin Chambers to lead its efforts to investigate
fraudsters who used the pandemic as an excuse to bilk government
assistance programs.

In September, the inspector general for the U.S. Labor
Department said fraudsters likely stole $45.6 billion from the
United States’ unemployment insurance program during the
coronavirus outbreak by applying tactics like using Social
Security numbers of deceased individuals.

Also in September, federal prosecutors charged dozens of
defendants, who were accused of stealing $250 million from a
government aid program that was supposed to feed children in
need during the pandemic.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by David
Gregorio)