U.S. Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Todd Young (R-IN), the chair and a member of the U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, respectively, last week requested that the committee receive a preliminary briefing from the Small Business Administration (SBA) on what they call fraud endemic in COVID relief programs.
In a Jan. 8 letter sent to SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler, the senators wrote that such fraud has “prioritized shoveling money out the door rather than implementing functioning oversight mechanisms to protect taxpayers.”
“These COVID relief programs were fecklessly mismanaged, and every jaw-dropping revelation about a new COVID relief scam serves to drive home that point,” they wrote.
Sen. Ernst and Sen. Young, who were joined by two other GOP lawmakers in signing the letter, cited numerous examples of fraud, such as in Minnesota, where fraudsters were exposed for stealing billions from taxpayers in a childcare scheme, as well as in Iowa, where an illegal immigrant who served in the Cuban military was arrested for his part in defrauding the SBA Paycheck Protection Program of nearly $2.4 million, among others.
“Scammers and fraudsters will exploit any gaps in the system to enrich themselves at taxpayers’ expense,” wrote the senators. “This is unacceptable.”
In their letter, the senators asked for a committee briefing by Jan. 22 that provides a full breakdown of all the tax dollars stolen by criminals to date.
Among the information the committee seeks are details about the broad parameters of the SBA’s investigation, including which companies and individuals are being investigated, whether this investigation extends to review of other states where similar patterns of abuse are being alleged, and “the financial breakdown of the crime ring’s ill-gotten gains,” according to their letter.
The senators also requested that Loeffler inform the Senate committee about any authorities the SBA needs from Congress to accelerate the process of recovering stolen funds and to stop fraud in future programs, among other information.