Another Sad Story of Covid Fraud

livemint.com:

Back in early 2020, some of us figured that shutting down the economy in a panicked response to Covid probably wasn’t a wise move. Reporting on the latest in a very long series of negative consequences from politicians’ reckless attempt to close society and then simulate prosperity with government spending, Jeanette Settembre reports for the New York Post: Tens of thousands of fraudsters splurged on Lamborghinis, vacation homes, private jet flights and Cartier jewelry by fleecing the PPP loan system... — and did it because the COVID loan scheme was so easy to milk .

. . “The fraud was so easy to commit.

All of the information was self-reported and none of it was verified or checked," Haywood Talcove of LexisNexis Risk Solutions told The Post. “During the height of the pandemic, it was really hard to purchase [luxury] items like a Rolls-Royce, or a high-end Mercedes because you had people walking in with cash from the PPP program to purchase those items for whatever the dealer was asking," Talcove said. The Small Business Administration explains: The U.S.

Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted this review to provide a comprehensive estimate of the potential fraud in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) pandemic assistance loan programs. Over the course of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, SBA disbursed approximately $1.2 trillion of COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds.