Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

25. Small Business Administration · Minor

Account for and end fraud in all COVID-19 relief programs

Partially done

750 25. Small Business Administration

“A full accounting of and an end to waste, fraud, and abuse in all COVID-19 relief programs, including the PPP and EIDL programs, and action that follows the rule of law by ensuring that loan recipients who are not eligible for loan forgiveness or who falsified loan applications either pay back the funds or are referred to law enforcement.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The Fraud Prevention Pilot Program with Palantir software was formalized and expanded; by that date the SBA reported suspensions of over 150,000 pandemic borrowers across five states tied to more than $10 billion in suspected fraud. Work in progress, not an end to the fraud or an accounting of it.

  2. Partially done

    The independent watchdog records the accounting as unfinished. GAO's priority open recommendations letter to the Administrator makes oversight of the COVID-19 pandemic programs the first of its two highlighted areas, and the recommendations it presses are still open: that SBA "(1) develop cross-program data analytics to better identify applicants attempting to defraud multiple programs and (2) identify and obtain access to external data to help verify applicant information and detect potential fraud", and that SBA "should expand and document processes related to COVID-19 overpayments to more effectively identify and recover overpayments". A dated Primary saying the fraud accounting is not complete, from outside the agency.

  3. Partially done

    The Quote's second half — pay the funds back or be referred to law enforcement — was delivered at scale for one tranche: 562,000 borrowers tied to $22.2 billion in delinquent PPP and COVID-EIDL loans were referred to Treasury for collection and transmitted to the Department of Justice. Against the SBA OIG's own $200 billion estimate that is roughly a ninth of the exposure, and the "full accounting" the Quote asks for has not been published.

  4. Partially done

    The state-by-state review began producing findings: 111,620 California borrowers holding 118,489 PPP and EIDL loans worth over $8.6 billion were suspended, following 6,900 suspensions in Minnesota. Suspension bars future SBA lending and 8(a) participation; it is not by itself repayment or prosecution.

  5. Partially done

    Citizenship verification, date-of-birth verification and automatic fraud alerts were added to all SBA loan applications, closing the controls that had let loans go to applicants recorded as over 115 or under 11. Prospective controls on current lending, not an accounting of the pandemic programs.

  6. Attempted

    The Day One priorities memo instituted a zero-tolerance policy for fraud, established a Fraud Working Group, committed the agency to appoint a Fraud Czar, restarted the SBA's dormant collections programs and put the scale of the problem on the record at "an estimated $200 billion in pandemic-era fraud". A directive; nothing had yet been recovered or referred.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The Quote asks for three things: a full accounting of pandemic-program fraud, an end to it, and repayment or law-enforcement referral for ineligible or false applicants. The third is being delivered in volume; the first has not been published as an accounting; the second is by its nature not yet complete. partial.
  • The SBA’s own numbers are the measure of the gap: $200 billion estimated fraud (OIG), $22.2 billion referred for collection, roughly $10 billion covered by suspensions in five states.
  • The narrower asks on the same page cluster carry the same instruments: #2048 (repayment), #2050 (DOJ referrals), #2047 (private-sector support), #2049 (Planned Parenthood forgiveness). Each is dated and leveled on its own words.
  • SBA OIG recommendation OIG-21-09 (duplicate PPP loans) is still open, with the FY2027 CBJ recording that the Office of Capital Access will address it only after an evaluation of “PPP remediation activities” — a live gap in the accounting, from the agency’s own record.
Action
eliminate
Object
waste, fraud, and abuse in COVID-19 relief programs (PPP and EIDL)
ID
2034