An online lending platform called Kabbage sent 378 pandemic loans worth $7 million to fake companies (mostly farms) with names like “Deely Nuts” and “Beefy King.”
Derek Willis
Reprinted with permission from ProPublica
A House committee has opened a formal investigation into how several online lenders may have facilitated fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loans, following reporting by
ProPublica and other news outlets.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis probe seeks answers from Kabbage and BlueVine, online lending platforms that processed hundreds of thousands of government-backed loans to small businesses, as well as Celtic Bank and Cross River Bank, which frequently partnered with the web-based lenders.
Although these highly automated lenders helped the Small Business Administration s $800 billion relief program reach small businesses that weren t being served by traditional banks, they also became targets for cheaters.
Hundreds of PPP Loans Went to Fake Farms in Absurd Places governing.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from governing.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
An online lending platform called Kabbage sent 378 pandemic loans worth $7 million to fake companies (mostly farms) with names like “Deely Nuts” and “Beefy King.” The shoreline communities of Ocean County, New Jersey, are a summertime getaway for throngs of urbanites, lined with vacation homes and ice cream parlors. Not exactly pastoral which is odd, considering dozens of Paycheck Protection Program loans to supposed farms that flowed into the beach towns last year. As the first round of the federal government’s relief program for small businesses wound down last summer, “Ritter Wheat Club” and “Deely Nuts,” ostensibly a wheat farm and a tree nut farm, each got $20,833, the maximum amount available for sole proprietorships. “Tomato Cramber,” up the coast in Brielle, got $12,739, while “Seaweed Bleiman” in Manahawkin got $19,957.