Scammer potentially netted $200B in pandemic business aid, federal watchdog says : NPR

If you have lost a loved one to COVID-19 and need help with funeral expenses, beware of callers, texts or email from someone claiming to be from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA will wait for your application; no one from the agency will contact you. Biden’s request means the top annual credit for eligible families for children under 6 would increase from $2,000 to $3,600. Biden had pushed for the credit in the Build Back Better legislation, but could not find enough support in the Senate to make it part of the Inflation Reduction Act. When you accept a PPP loan, you do so with the understanding that any part of the loan that is not forgiven will have to be paid back.

• The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) program was established under the CAA, 2021 as part of the Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Nonprofits, and Venues Act and later amended by the American Rescue Plan Act.
• They came into their riches by participating in what experts say is the theft of as much as $80 billion — or about 10 percent — of the $800 billion handed out in a Covid relief plan known as the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP.
• The Treasury Department is providing critical assistance to small businesses across the country, facilitating the urgent deployment of capital and support to help these organizations not just persevere, but recover on solid footing.
• Passage of the PPP Extension Act gives applicants until May 31, 2021, to apply for a PPP loan, gives lenders until June 30, 2021, to process those applications, and extends the covered period for all PPP loans to June 30, 2021.

In contrast, less than 1% of loan forgiveness applications came from businesses with more than 500 employees. The Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program (EIDL) provides grants and low-interest loans to help borrowers pay for operating expenses. Prior to the pandemic, EIDL had been used to support small businesses in communities affected by disasters like hurricanes or wildfires.

COVID-19 relief options

WALKER and LEVY submitted more than 100 fraudulent PPP loan applications to various financial institutions. Among other fraudulent misrepresentations, the PPP applications WALKER and LEVY submitted frequently contained phony bank statements and tax documents. WALKER and LEVY received significant kickbacks from the applicants, including BAEZ, GETTEN, POWELL, and WHEELER, and shared portions of their kickbacks with recruiters, including some of the defendants. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act reduced interest rates on federal student loans to 0 percent and eliminated required payments from March 13 to September 30, 2020.

• PeopleFund is launching access to a capital-oriented cohort for BIPOC-owned businesses in underserved areas around Texas.
• The federal small business loan program was set up to help small businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic impacts.
• Founded in 1999, Project Fighting Chance began as an amateur boxing program and has since grown into an organization that has assisted, trained and mentored over 5,000 youth, and counting.
• If you would like more information on our PPP lending or the forgiveness process, please visit our Paycheck Protection Loans page.
• Loan payments on permitted use, including principal, interest, and fees are deferred until the SBA remits your forgiveness amount to you or if you do not apply for forgiveness, for 10 months from the end of your loan-forgiveness-covered period.

We’re here to help New York State’s small businesses reimagine, rebuild and renew. Find out more about our Business Pandemic Recovery Initiative programs, including tax credits and grant funding, below. And find a statewide network of centers staffed by people who can walk you through how to apply. EIDL applicants said their greatest concerns were a lack of information and uncertainty about their application status. Additionally, we found that until February, SBA didn’t provide critical information to potential applicants such as limits on loan amounts and definitions of certain program terms.

New Funding for One Old Program and Two New Ones

We’ve partnered with the City of Victoria, Texas – Government and created the Business Resiliency Microloan Program, a microloan program that helps Victoria businesses who have been impacted by COVID19. Please click here to apply for the Small Business Relief Program with the City of Victoria. For most loans, there will be no additional fees, penalties, or additional interest (beyond scheduled amounts) added to your account, and  you do not need to submit additional documentation to qualify. You can simply tell your servicer that you have a pandemic-related financial hardship. In today’s WatchBlog post, we look at how these 2 loan programs worked, their benefits, and challenges SBA faced in administering them. In 1971, a group of visionary women founded San Francisco’s Women’s Centers, guided by a belief that all women and girls have the right to safe, joyous and creative lives.

(b)  All persons who wish to continue making student loan payments shall be allowed to do so, notwithstanding the deferments provided pursuant to subsection (a) of this section. There is no formal application process for Targeted EIDL Advance forgiveness. The only requirement is that you must spend the advance only for the expenses listed above. Although there is no application or accounting requirement, you should keep a detailed record of how you spend advance funds in the event the SBA has questions at a later date.

Government Shared Services

According to the Secret Service, conspirators used a debit card issuer to conceal and move the funds through over 15,000 accounts. The Secret Service worked with the debit card issuer, Green Dot Bank, to seize the $286 million. Serving communities in Chicago, Shaw Legal Services offers legal services and works with their clients so that they can pay in ways that work for them. “This is a very stressful, emotional time for us and I’m so grateful to have been connected with Self-Help. During the entire process they made me feel like I was their biggest client,” says Anne Shaw, Founder.

If you need a lawyer, there may be resources to assist you, and you may qualify for free legal services through legal aid. If you’re a servicemember, you should consult with your local Legal Assistance Office . Most homeowners can temporarily pause or reduce their mortgage payments if they’re struggling financially. The federal small business loan program was set up to help small businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic impacts. As of May 31, the SBA had guaranteed more than 11.8 million loans, worth about $800 billion. Small businesses that received PPP loans can request that their loans be forgiven—meaning they don’t need to pay them back if they meet conditions, like maintaining employee compensation levels and spending 60% or more of the loan on payroll costs.

All applicants may be asked to provide an IRS Form 4506-T, which gives the SBA permission to request your tax return information. Communication from the SBA will come from an official government email with an @sba.gov ending. Do not send sensitive information to any email address that does not end in @sba.gov.

“The parents of the children we serve are essential workers,” said owner Mary Cofield. “They are working in a nearby chicken factory or in the hospital or in nursing homes.” To date, the NWSCDC has lent over $11 million to several major catalytic projects, which have created over 1,080 jobs. With a population exceeding 90,000, the area incorporated in Fresno’s Building Healthy Communities’ service has its share of challenges, including high levels of poverty, unemployment, gang violence, and high rates of obesity and asthma that exceed statewide averages.

In another Florida case, prosecutors have charged a man who they say used proceeds from a $7.2 million emergency loan to buy a 12,579-square-foot mansion, a Lincoln Navigator car, a Maserati and a Mercedes-Benz. The basic scheme, Talcove said, was “really simple.” People went on state websites and took the names of existing businesses or registered new, fake ones. An academic paper released last year estimated at least $76 billion in potential fraud, and the authors said that was conservative.

In spite of these challenges, Fresno BHC and its partners are turning the tide on multiple fronts. Day by day, the balance of power is shifting to the people and the result is a healthier Fresno for all. If you would like more information on our PPP lending or the forgiveness process, please visit our Paycheck Protection Loans page. Ready to start analyzing the latest State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) data? Download the data now to get a look at how your state or community spent pandemic relief.

If you previously applied for and received a partial EIDL Advance ($1,000–$9,000) under the original, now expired EIDL Advance program, the SBA will reach out to you first by email to determine your eligibility and provide instructions on what documentation you need to submit. She has a job in the federal government with a starting salary of $80,000. And during the pandemic, these bureaucratic barriers become particularly problematic because of the large number of https://www.bookstime.com/blog/pandemic-relief-loans borrowers whose incomes have changed. The Secret Service says it has seized more than $1.4 billion in wrongfully obtained funds since 2020, and has begun more than 3,850 inquiries and investigations into pandemic-related fraud. “Working closely with our Central and North Florida Cyber Fraud Task Forces, this investigation enabled the recovery of a significant amount of critical federal relief,” Assistant Special Agent in Charge Roy Dotson said in a statement.

• Please read and evaluate the privacy and security policies of the site you are entering which may be different than those of Independent Federal Credit Union prior to entering into any transaction.
• If you already have a loan, and have been affected, give us a call to see if we can help you with an extension to ease the stress during this time.
• Take the time to explore the criteria to determine if you qualify and take advantage of possible financial relief.
• Businesses who used them should have claimed them when filing taxes in 2022.
• Figure out who services your mortgage, and see if your mortgage is backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or the federal government.

The fraud didn’t harm just the taxpayers — it hurt people who needed the money. They came into their riches by participating in what experts say is the theft of as much as $80 billion — or about 10 percent — of the $800 billion handed out in a Covid relief plan known as the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. That’s on top of the $90 billion to $400 billion believed to have been stolen from the $900 billion Covid unemployment relief program — at least half taken by international fraudsters — as NBC News reported last year.

The report, called “COVID-19 Pandemic EIDL and PPP Loan Fraud Landscape,” details how the rush to make the money available made it easier for fraudsters to apply for loans to keep non-existent businesses afloat, and then have those loans forgiven and covered by tax dollars. Congressional officials say they are investigating a half-dozen lenders and service providers, including Bluevine, which processed loan applications for $4.5 billion and touted that a business could get loan approval in five minutes. Gonzalez said that unlike with unemployment relief, which went to every person who qualified, lenders had to stop making PPP loans when the money ran out, even though demand continued.