'The Great Grift' keeps getting greater

“The Great Grift” is a new term trying to take its place in the lexicon. It refers to the looting of government largesse during the pandemic, when well-meaning efforts were made to keep Americans and American businesses afloat in the face of a massive, wall-to-wall shut down of daily life. Congress and the president stepped in. Many businesses benefited from their quick action, but there was a dirty downside. Fraudsters struck in several programs and then slipped away into the night. The reckoning is taking place now, not reckoning as in justice, but reckoning as in counting up the cost.

Just last week the U.S. Small Business Administration inspector general increased projections of the dollar amount fleeced from a couple major programs: the Paycheck Protection and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs. That number: $200 billion, taken in the early stages of pandemic relief, the IG says, when the focus was on rushing the aid out without putting anti-fraud roadblocks in place.

According to the AP, the inspector general’s report said “at least 17 percent of all COVID-EIDL and PPP funds were disbursed to potentially fraudulent actors.”

Also from the AP: The fraud estimate for the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program is more than $136 billion, which represents 33 percent of the total money spent on that program, according to the IG’s report. The Paycheck Protection fraud estimate is $64 billion, the inspector general said.

The SBA has pushed back. Bailey DeVries, SBA’s acting associate administrator for capital access, criticized the IG’s report and its methods. Still, the SBA admits there was looting, just not as much as the IG posits. The agency said it’s “working estimate” was just $28 billion in fraud, not $200 billion.

The AP had reported this month that the two SBA programs plus a third meant to provide unemployment insurance to workers was robbed of $280 billion. So it’s either $280 billion, $200 billion, or a measly $28 billion.

Either way, the loss estimated by AP represents 10% of the $4.2 trillion disbursed in COVID relief aid.

And the entire story is still unfolding. The IG’s office has a backlog of more than 90,000 actionable leads into The Great Grift pandemic relief fraud, which, the AP says, amounts to nearly a century’s worth of work. All to say the entire bungle may never be fully documented or solved and many grifters never brought to justice.

Where is space?

Three cheers to Virgin Galactic for its successful start to its space tourist program with a launch Thursday. And for those wondering if it’s really space they’re talking about, the US considers space to begin 50 miles up from Earth’s surface. The VSS Unity rocket-powered space plane went to 53 miles. So it’s space. It’s worth remembering that this program, one of the current return-to-space efforts underway among outfits like Space X and Blue Origin (and there are others), is not just about joyrides by wealthy people into the skies. The long-term plan has been to develop suboribital passenger travel, not just for millionaires, that will mean shorter travel times for destinations around the world.

Inside: Speaking of fraud, check out New Mexico’s “fraud doctor” with tips for small businesses on how to avoid less great grafts, but grafts nonetheless.

jleacock@abqjournal.com