The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) has unique cross-agency authority to coordinate and facilitate oversight of relief spending, focusing on issues that cut across different federal agencies and programs to detect fraud, waste, and abuse. We support various Inspectors General (IGs) to provide a comprehensive approach to oversight.
For this fraud alert, we worked with the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to compare a targeted selection of Social Security numbers (SSNs) to applications for the SBA’s COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (COVID-19 EIDL) and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
What We Found
We analyzed more than 33 million COVID-19 EIDL and PPP applications to identify 2.7 million SSNs that may have been invalid or potentially not issued by the SSA prior to June 2011. We then asked the SSA to verify:
Was the SSN valid?
Did the name and date of birth (DOB) associated with the SSN on the loan match SSA records?
Did the date of birth associated with the SSN on the application match SSA records?
Did the applicant use an SSN associated with a deceased individual?
The SSA informed us that 221,427 of the SSNs used on applications in this targeted selection were either not issued by the SSA or that identifying information in the SSA’s records did not match the name and/or DOB information provided by the applicants. This suggested potential identity fraud in the use of those SSNs. We determined that $5.4 billion in COVID-19 EIDL or PPP loans was paid to applicants using 69,323 of those SSNs between April 2020 and October 2022.
Why it Matters
Pandemic relief funds were distributed through numerous agencies, making it difficult to track fraud across programs. We found that improved data sharing across the government would strengthen program integrity and better protect taxpayer dollars from fraud.
Key Takeaway:
$5.4 billion in COVID-19 EIDL or PPP loans was paid to applicants using SSNs that were either not issued by the SSA or did not match name or DOB information from the SSA, indicating possible identity fraud.