2 weeks Ago By Robert McGreevy
Vice President Kamala Harris’s plan to offer $20,000 in forgivable loans to minority entrepreneurs is a golden opportunity for scammers and fraudsters, experts told the Daily Caller. Harris announced the plan in early October as part of her “ Opportunity Agenda for Black Men .” It promises to “ensure that Black men can build wealth and achieve economic success” by providing one million loans, fully forgivable and worth up to $20,000 each, to black entrepreneurs “and others who have historically faced barriers to starting a new business or growing an existing business.
” The loans would be in partnership with the Small Business Administration (SBA), which also oversaw the administration of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a COVID-era program meant to give small businesses resources “to maintain their payroll, hire back employees who may have been laid off, and cover applicable overhead.” That program, however, was the target of a sprawling fraud scheme which was “the single largest transfer of money to criminal groups in our history,” Haywood Talcove, the CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions Government, told the Daily Caller. The rate of fraud under COVID-era payment plans like PPP was “conservatively 20 percent” and “probably closer to 35 percent,” Talcove told the Caller.
Given the efforts of large transnational criminal organizations, Talcove said, it could be as high as 50 percent. If Harris’s plan saw similar rates of fraud, it would cost the taxpayer billions of dollars. (Stream ‘CLEANING UP KAMALA’ Now) Of the potentially hundreds of billions of dollars Talcove estimates people stole through COVID programs, the government has only recovered $13 billion, he told the Caller.
In fact, PPP fraud, and exploitation of the similar COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL), has been so rampant that the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) extended the statute of limitation on the crime from five years to 10 in 2023. In addition to the fraud perpetrated by transnational groups, who Talcove says come from countries like China, Russia, Nigeria and Romania, Americans appeared to exploit COVID relief extensively as well. The government fully forgave PPP loans that went alleged businesses such as “ Free Money LLC ,” an apparently New York-based company who had $15,000 in PPP loans forgiven in 2021, according to Pro Publica.
(RELATED: Man Sentenced To 9 Years In Prison After Fraudulently Using $1.6 Million In PPP Loans On Cars, Rolex) Other eyebrow-raising corporations to receive forgiveness included “ Money Makes Money Inc. ” and “ Nig Corp.
” Something like this? https://t.co/HUFW4dCpqg pic.twitter.
com/wC8HzzTj5h — Confirmed Miscer ⚔️🍁🔫 (@ManDaveJobGood) October 14, 2024 In 2023, the PRAC also found 69,323 potentially ineligible social security numbers who had received PPP loans, according to a report . Harris’s new plan appears just as likely to fall victim to exploitation. “Anytime you have a government-sponsored subsidy that is going to a massive amount of people, the probability for improper payments and fraud is 100 percent,” Talcove said.
“History has shown us that when big sums of money are quickly rolled out with inadequate oversight, we open the door to fraud and abuse,” Republican Texas Rep. Michael Cloud told the Daily Caller. Criminals are already talking about how they’re going to exploit the program on platforms like Telegram, Talcove said.
Twitter users have also been quick to point out how easily they believe it will be to defraud the government. “I think Kamala Harris just announced we can run the PPP loan scam again if she get in office,” one user wrote . I think Kamala Harris just announced we can run the PPP loan scam again if she get in office.
👀👀👀 pic.twitter.com/N9OflMuvzG — Easy Money 💳💎 (@Bitcoin_Teej) October 14, 2024 “$20,000 isn’t even enough money to launch a food truck, but it is just the right amount to buy a used car or nice vacation while being too small to justify any serious investigation into its misuse,” another said.
$20,000 isn’t even enough money to launch a food truck, but it is just the right amount to buy a used car or nice vacation while being too small to justify any serious investigation into its misuse. https://t.co/NYCH1yWf7m — AnechoicMedia (@AnechoicMedia_) October 15, 2024 The federal government has taken almost no responsibility for the fraud.
Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer and the House Oversight Committee, which Rep. Cloud is a member of, did probe COVID fraud and found close to $200 billion in stolen funds.
I will get the backs of America’s taxpayers. That is why on February 1, @GOPoversight will hold our first hearing titled “Federal Pandemic Spending: A Prescription for Waste, Fraud, and Abuse,” to focus on the rampant waste of taxpayer $$$ in COVID relief programs. @BloombergTV pic.
twitter.com/WZWhsrhyrK — Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) January 28, 2023 “The Biden-Harris Administration allowed fraud to run rampant in federal unemployment programs and is now moving fast to make the pandemic unemployment programs permanent,” Comer wrote in a report.
Despite the committee’s recommendations, which include prioritizing antiquated IT systems and verifying claimants’ proof of work, there is still a lack of federal accountability for the programs, Cloud told the Caller. “A forgivable loan theoretically comes with conditions that must be met, such as job creation or measurable contributions to the economy, to be forgiven. In practice, though, many of these programs end up functioning like handouts because they lack the rigorous oversight needed to ensure real accountability,” Cloud said.
Talcove concurred. (RELATED: ‘Rigged’: Death Of The American Voter | WATCH NOW) “When there’s an emergency, like there was with COVID, [the government says] we’ll go get the money later. We’ll stop the criminals later, right? But the fact of the matter is, pay and chase, it doesn’t work.
” “No one ever talks about the victim,” Talcove, who told the Caller his mother was a victim of stolen identity, said. “These are not victimless crimes. There’s somebody that needed the benefit, whose identity was purchased on the dark web for pennies that couldn’t get what they deserved.
” In addition to being vulnerable to fraud, Harris’ race-based plan is also “unconstitutional,” Rep. Cloud said. “[It’s] a ridiculous thing to propose when our country is currently incredibly divided and all Americans are struggling to afford essentials under her administration,” he said.
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