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

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.
About 57,500 Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loans worth $3.6 billion were disbursed by August 2020, the report added.