COVID-19 Pandemic EIDL and PPP Loan Fraud Landscape Recommendations Update

This report updates Congress on progress made by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) on the 39 open pandemic-related recommendations referenced in Office of Inspector General (OIG) Report 23-09, COVID-19 Pandemic EIDL and PPP Loan Fraud Landscape.

Over the course of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, SBA disbursed approximately $1.2 trillion of COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Paycheck Protection Program funds. The economic assistance was intended to help eligible small business owners and entrepreneurs adversely affected by the crisis.

In Report 23-09, we estimated SBA disbursed more than $200 billion in potentially fraudulent loans through its COVID-19 relief programs. To establish this estimate, OIG used investigative casework, prior OIG reporting, and advanced data analytics to identify multiple schemes used by fraudsters to steal from the American taxpayer and exploit programs meant to help those in need.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a national emergency in March 2020 through the issuance of OIG’s fraud landscape report in June 2023, OIG issued 77 pandemic-related recommendations to SBA. Of the 77 recommendations, the agency had taken corrective actions to close 38 of them and 39 recommendations remained open as of June 2023. SBA has been working on implementing the corrective actions necessary to close the open recommendations.