At the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, when offices and restaurants began shuttering, the federal government scrambled to keep small businesses afloat — ultimately spending over a trillion dollars to help protect the American Dream for millions of workers and business owners.
But even before the first checks went out, alarm bells went off.
The person ringing those bells the loudest was Hannibal “Mike” Ware, the inspector general of the Small Business Administration. The veteran internal watchdog says he participated in a series of meetings with Trump administration officials and SBA program analysts that were laced with “testy exchanges” about how to expeditiously dispense funds without leaving them vulnerable to fraudulent claims.
His warnings went unheeded, Ware said, and the fallout has taken him “from a black-haired guy to a gray-haired guy.”
“My frustration level was extremely high,” Ware told ABC News in a recent interview. And now, a year and half later, he said “the magnitude of the fraud we are seeing is unheard of — unprecedented.”
As small businesses emerge from the pandemic, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), two key relief programs passed as part of the congressional CARES Act, are winding down. But for all the jobs they’ve rescued, their legacies may be tarnished by unprecedented amounts of fraud — a reality that experts fear may impair efforts to pass future emergency relief programs.
“In terms of the monetary…
