SBA Refers $22B in Fraudulent Loans to Treasury

0:00It's April 24, U.S. News Today starts now, AI-powered and nationwide. I'm Cory with the story. The Small Business Administration just dropped a major move, referring 562,000 suspected fraudulent pandemic loans worth over $22 billion to the Treasury for collection. These are mostly from the Paycheck Protection Program and the COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loans. Loans that got flagged way back but sat untouched. After the previous administration, they never pushed these for repayment, even though federal rules demanded. Now, the current SBA team says they're ending that protection racket, with full backing from a White House anti-fraud task force. Folks are fired up about the accountability angle, pointing fingers at years of ignored red flags that led borrowers skate free. Fewer than 1,000 were even under investigation before this, and zero repayments happened on that massive pile of cash. The referrals also went to the Justice Department, part of a broader crackdown identifying over

1:021 million suspicious loans total. New safeguards, like citizenship checks and state probes, are rolling out to tighten things up. This whole of government push signals the start of real recovery for taxpayer dollars lost to scams, and they're gearing up for even bigger halls. Ahead.