![]() MARTÍNEZ: OK, so then why wasn't the government stricter with forgiveness? I mean, couldn't they have tried a little bit harder to weed out fraudsters or told businesses that prosper during COVID to actually just repay the money? PFEIFFER: He estimates that $64 billion of the nearly $800 billion in loans show signs of fraud. SAM KRUGER: The PPP program seems to have resulted in billions of dollars of fraudulent loans that have ultimately turned into grants. Here's how University of Texas finance professor Sam Kruger puts it. ![]() So that meant not only did people get loans they didn't truly need, it also attracted scam artists. To qualify for a loan, you just had to say you thought you needed it and to get it forgiven, you did not have to prove the money was necessary. MARTÍNEZ: But was it legal for them to take that money? Also, many businesses that thrived during COVID got their loans forgiven, like some manufacturing and construction firms. They have companies that each got a PPP loan of about $1,000,000 entirely forgiven. ![]() But a lot of that money went to businesses that didn't need it - wealthy celebrities like Khloe Kardashian and Tom Brady, for example. That's according to Small Business Administration data released this month. And anyone who got PPP funding is probably relieved to hear that 92% of all the loans have been granted full or partial forgiveness so far. SACHA PFEIFFER, BYLINE: So there is no doubt that these loans were a lifesaver for many companies. What's not to like about these new numbers, then? So, Sacha, people who got these loans were hoping they'd be forgiven. Sacha Pfeiffer of NPR's investigations team is here to explain why that high forgiveness rate is troubling to many people. It gave potentially forgivable government loans to small businesses during COVID, and the data shows the vast majority of those loans have been forgiven. Interesting new data is out on the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP for short.
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