A sheet of uncut 00 bills is inspected during the printing process at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing Western Currency Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sept. 24, 2013.
In comments attached to the report, a senior SBA official disputed the new numbers. Bailey DeVries, SBA’s acting associate administrator for capital access, said the inspector general’s “approach contains serious flaws that significantly overestimate fraud and unintentionally mislead the public to believe that the work we did together had no significant impact in protecting against fraud.”
The SBA inspector general, Hannibal “Mike” Ware, said in a statement Tuesday that the report “utilizes investigative casework, prior reporting, and cutting-edge data analysis to identify multiple fraud schemes used to potentially steal over $200 billion from American taxpayers and exploit programs meant to help those in need.”
SBA previously told The Associated Press the federal government has not developed an accepted system for assessing fraud in federal programs. Previous analyses, the agency said, have pointed to “potential fraud” or “fraud indicators” in a manner that conveys those numbers as a true fraud estimate when they are not. For the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, the agency said it’s “working estimate” found $28 billion in likely fraud.
The Biden administration put in place stricter rules to stem pandemic fraud, including use of the “Do Not Pay” database. Biden also recently proposed a $1.6 billion plan to boost law enforcement efforts to go after pandemic relief fraudsters.