United States Government Had $250 Billion Stolen from United States Pandemic Fund, $267 Million Disbursed to Dead People

Our office provides auditing, investigative, and other services to support and assist SBA in achieving its mission. The office is ranked as the top OIG in the Federal government as a Best Place to Work by the Partnership for Public Service with an engagement and satisfaction employee score of 90.6, which exceeds the private sector score of 79.1 and the overall government score of 64.5. As a result of its oversight efforts, OIG audits provide recommendations to SBA leadership to improve the performance of SBA’s programs and services for the benefit of the American people. Similarly, OIG investigations pursue evidence of wrongdoing in SBA programs, bringing fraudsters to justice. OIG provides taxpayers with a significant return on investment, rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse in SBA programs.

During fiscal year (FY) 2021, OIG provided an exponential return on investment to the taxpayer with $4.2 billion in dollar accomplishments, which includes investigative recoveries, fines, and forfeitures, as well as review findings of disallowed costs. OIG’s oversight efforts in FY 2022 exceeded these returns on investment to the taxpayer with dollar accomplishments exceeding $4.8 billion. OIG oversight of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) programs has resulted in 776 indictments, 621 arrests, and 426 convictions as of December 2022. Also, over $8 billion in EIDL funds have been returned to SBA by financial institutions and another $20 billion by borrowers. OIG has played a key role in the return of these funds through working with our law enforcement partners and financial institutions. We are educating the public about fraud in the pandemic relief programs, which has served as a deterrent to fraudsters. We are working with our law enforcement partners to investigate fraud and the misuse of billions in pandemic assistance funds, ultimately making the nation’s taxpayers whole.

See full statement here