Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., told Newsmax Thursday that the sheer amount of fraud that was committed to obtain federal COVID-19 relief funds is "shocking."
"COVID is over, but discovering fraud is just the beginning," Bean said during an appearance on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "A report that you just mentioned has just come out — $200 billion in missing COVID relief funds from the PPP [Paycheck Protection Program] program or the EIDL [Economic Injury Disaster Loan] program. We are just now discovering how bad the fraud is. One in five loans that were made are now being discovered that they were fraudulently obtained and the truth is coming out."
Bean said the House Small Business Committee will be briefed later Thursday "on just how bad it is."
Released in late June by the Small Business Administration (SBA) inspector general, the report said the $200 billion estimate represents 17% of the $1.2 trillion of COVID-19 PPP and EIDL funds doled out by the agency.
SBA Inspector General Hannibal "Mike" Ware's office said its investigation has netted 1,011 indictments, 803 arrests and 529 convictions related to COVID EIDL and PPP fraud as of May.
The Florida congressman also said that many people went to unusual lengths to obtain the federal funds.
"We're also discovering that many people used — are you ready for this? — pictures of Barbie dolls, Ken dolls, to create fake identities to steal this money," he said. "The report came in [and] there's over 90,000 cases that are actively showing fraud. It's going to take 100 years to go through the paperwork to track all this money down."
When asked how Congress could be unaware that fraud was taking place, Bean said that the main objective at the time was speed.
"They were in such a hurry to get this money out that they did little protections, little testing, and now we're discovering, oh my gosh, people even from foreign countries took advantage of it, and we got this money out," he said. "So we're just now discovering how bad it is."
If people who applied for either COVID relief program unwittingly made a mistake, Bean said that "everybody will have a chance to make their claim."
"But these are people that there's not a good reason for receiving 18 of these types of loans when you're only eligible for one or using fake numbers," he said. "Those are the ones that are at the top of the ticket."
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