Small Business Administrator (SBA) Kelly Loeffler unveiled a sweeping fraud crackdown on Wednesday, announcing an audit of a decades-old $50 billion program she said has “never been looked at” and barring 112,000 borrowers from future aid over COVID-era loan fraud.
“There are dozens of programs across this government that need to be reviewed,” Loeffler said on “Mornings with Maria.”
“I found a program that we had in our agency about 50 years old, [that has] never been looked at, $50 billion, so what we’re doing is auditing each participant in the program, and we’re looking back at COVID-era loans.”
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The SBA chief said 112,000 borrowers in California are banned from ever getting SBA assistance again for allegedly defrauding COVID-era loan programs and expressed gratitude to Vice President JD Vance for leading the charge in the fight against fraud.
President Donald Trump tapped Vance to spearhead the administration’s “war on fraud” during his State of the Union address last month, a task the vice president accepted with a promise to root out “stolen” taxpayer money on a systematic level.
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“The American people want accountability. They want to make sure their hard-earned tax dollars are not going to fraudsters,” Loeffler said.
“People that have come here and built businesses on defrauding the government… we’re going to see results on that and make sure that we change it for good. These changes need to be durable and sustainable for the American taxpayer.”
Loeffler has already paused some SBA loans to Minnesota amid a widespread fraud investigation in the state.
She vowed to go “state by state” to weed out offenders, telling the New York Post that the push is part of a greater effort to “contribute meaningfully” to Vance’s fraud task force.
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