Scamsters robbed USD 5.4 billion via government loans citing Covid-19, reveals US watchdog

Washington: The United States possibly doled out nearly USD 5.4 billion in Covid-19 loans to citizens with questionable Social Security Numbers (SSN), a federal watchdog revealed in a report that was released on Monday.

The US watchdog called the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), has found a massive 69,323 people with questionable Social Security Numbers, who used these to get a total of USD 5.4 billion in potentially fraudulent loans citing losses incurred and unemployment issues that had arisen due to the Covid-19 pandemic which took the world by storm in the early months of 2020.

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

“Identified 69,323 questionable Social Security Numbers (SSNs) used to obtain USD 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 PRAC said in its report.

Nearly 57,500 Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loans amounting to USD 3.6 billion were disbursed by August 2020— in the first year of the global pandemic, the report indicated.

As the Covid-19 pandemic started ebbing across the world, the United States began investigating many cases of fraud linked to US government assistance programs, like 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 United States Justice Department appointed federal prosecutor Kevin Chambers to lead the efforts to investigate fraudsters who used the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to get funds fraudulently from government assistance programs.

“The report reveals the significant fraud and identity theft that occurred under the prior administration due to the lack of basic anti-fraud controls, as well as how consequential were the Biden administration’s quick actions to reinstate strong anti-abuse measures in these emergency small business programs,” Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden said in an emailed statement.

The US watchdog’s report further mentioned that in 2021 the US Small Business Administration made improvements to its assistance program controls. President Biden took office in January of the same year.

Later, in September, the inspector general for the US Labour Department said fraudsters stole an estimated USD 45.6 billion from the United States’ unemployment insurance program during the Covid-19 outbreak by applying tactics like using Social Security numbers of deceased individuals.

In the same month, federal prosecutors charged dozens of defendants, who were accused of stealing USD 250 million from a government aid program that was supposed to feed children in need during the pandemic.

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