With Discovery of Rampant Somali Piracy, Small Business Administration Head Kelly Loeffler Stops Federal Grants to Minnesota

Closing the barn doors after Biden let the horse thieves empty it.

SBA halts grants to Minnesota in wake of fraud scandal

Small Business Administration (SBA) head Kelly Loeffler said Monday that her department is halting annual grants to Minnesota, amid an investigation into alleged fraud in COVID-era lending programs.

Loeffler said on the social platform X that the SBA is pausing yearly funding to Minnesota "while we investigate $430 million in suspected [Paycheck Protection Program] fraud across the state."

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was established by the 2020 CARES Act, which passed Congress and was signed into law by President Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The House Committee on Small Business has launched a probe into "fraud and concealment" within the PPP and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, also formed during the pandemic.

Loeffler sent a letter last week to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) outlining at least $2.5 million in PPP and EIDL loans sent to individuals indicted as part of a wide-ranging investigation into fraud involving Minnesota's social services.

So I assume the scam would involve foreign fraudsters claiming that they had going businesses, employing, of course, their mentally retarded criminal family members, and took "loans" from the federal government to keep these unemployed lowlife parasites "employed" in their jobs of sitting around collecting welfare from actual Americans.

Loeffler explains herself at Fox News:

When the news broke of convictions for rampant fraud across several pandemic programs in Minnesota, the $1 billion price tag and over 90 indictments were staggering. We now know this is a very low estimate of the price Americans have paid to fund deeply corrupt state-administered welfare programs.

The criminal nature of the scandal rocked the country: a vast network of Somali nonprofits systematically ripped off federal programs and denied Minnesota families of vital services at the height of the pandemic. In defrauding programs for nutrition, education and healthcare, the massive and sophisticated enterprise siphoned billions in taxpayer dollars.

Thanks to lax oversight under Democrat Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, organized crime crept in and then brazenly flourished. Even when dozens of whistleblowers repeatedly raised concerns to state oversight bodies and to his own office, Walz simply blamed racism and shrugged off the allegations.

The governor recently defended the state's "generosity" which allowed Somali fraudsters to purchase luxury cars, homes and vacations at the expense of hungry Minnesotans. Its welfare state is widely considered a magnet for those seeking to become beneficiaries. Alarmingly, welfare is now the state's single-largest annual expenditure -- higher than education, highways and public safety.

But new investigations have revealed that fraud runs much deeper than initially suspected, including at the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

During the pandemic, the agency issued $1.2 trillion in loans, helping save millions of small businesses and jobs. Much of that lending was legitimate, and many of the loans were forgiven, consistent with the 2020 CARES Act legislation. But the program was expanded in 2021 and became rife with fraud -- at least $200 billion, most of which went completely unaddressed and largely forgiven under the Biden administration.

At my direction, SBA launched an investigation into the Minnesota fraudsters. It took just days to find about $3 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) for numerous indicted nonprofits, including groups like Feeding our Future and Action for East African People.

With this disproportionate level of possible fraud -- and ongoing allegations arising across other federal programs -- we broadened our scope to investigate every COVID-19 loan granted in Minnesota. In a matter of weeks, we uncovered a staggering 13,600 PPP loans that were flagged for fraud but later approved, totaling about $430 million in potentially fraudulent funds that should have been used to save Main Street jobs and businesses. In many cases, the loans were forgiven entirely.

On Dec. 23, I informed the governor that SBA has halted about $5.5 million in annual funding to Minnesota pending further review, in an effort to prevent taxpayer dollars in a state that clearly lacks appropriate controls to responsibly steward federal funds. And we are actively working with our law enforcement partners to hold criminals accountable for the possible pandemic-era fraud now under investigation.

One thing is clear: the sheer breadth of fraud in Minnesota proves that the abuse of federal dollars is endemic to the state's welfare system -- and the logical consequence of socialist programs designed to pump out funding without accountability. Other states should be on notice.

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With over 80 federal welfare programs that spend $1 trillion annually, there is much work to do. The Trump administration is aggressively pursuing bad actors and implementing reforms to protect welfare programs for real American families who need it -- while also ensuring it is a lifeline, not a lifestyle.

Leaders in Minnesota have not been interested in or capable of meeting that mission, and the developing scandals raise serious questions about what may be going on in states like California and Illinois. The Trump administration is committed to exposing welfare abuse everywhere it exists -- and enforcing accountability in states that have allowed fraud to fester at the expense of law-abiding Americans and taxpayers.

It might not be just Somali fraud rings plundering our nation:

posted by Ace at 05:32 PM

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