Ernst Continues Pursuit of COVID Fraudsters

WASHINGTON – With the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery (SIGPR) warning its authority is expiring, U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chair Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) took swift action to ensure it will be able to continue to track down criminals who stole COVID relief designed for small businesses.

She led several of her Republican colleagues in introducing the Complete COVID Collections Act, which would extend authorization of the SIGPR through 2030 and expand its jurisdiction to cover other Small Business Administration (SBA) COVID-related programs to empower it to go after fraudsters stealing from taxpayers.

“Con artists took advantage of small businesses’ pain during COVID to defraud government programs designed to help hardworking Americans,” said Ernst. “While we are $36 trillion in debt, we especially cannot afford to leave more than $200 billion floating around, especially in the hands of fraudsters. My Republican colleagues and I are making sure that all resources are available in this fight to get taxpayers’ money back and hold these criminals accountable.”

Click here to view the bill text, which was sponsored by Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), and John Curtis (R-Utah).

Background:

While SBA ran the relief programs on a “first come, first serve” basis, the money ran out quickly, and many qualifying businesses were turned away as felons, gang members, and drug traffickers raked in cash. Some swindlers uploaded pictures of Barbie dolls as photo identification on SBA loan applications that were approved.

One alleged fraudster took home $8 million while nearly 2,000 struggling restaurants in Iowa were left empty-handed. Ernst detailed this in her report titled Small Business COVID-19 Fraud: Three Years Later State of Play – where she outlined the Biden SBA’s effort to discount the full extent of fraud and cast doubt on the legitimate estimates made by expert investigators.

Ernst’s tireless advocacy forced the Biden administration to eventually take action to recover billions in COVID aid in January 2024.

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