COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan Applications Submitted from Foreign IP Addresses (Report 22-17)

Case summary

This page is not a court case. It carries one document: SBA Office of Inspector General evaluation Report 22-17, dated September 12, 2022, on the agency's controls to flag or prevent potentially fraudulent COVID-19 EIDL applications submitted from foreign IP addresses. The OIG found that SBA processed more than 233,000 such applications from March 20, 2020 to November 12, 2021 and approved and disbursed 41,638 COVID-19 EIDLs, advances and grants for $1.3 billion; that the system had four layers of internal controls but the first two did not always block the applications; and that in a judgmental sample of 50 applications, 16 were not flagged by the system and another 15 were flagged but not properly reviewed by loan officers. The OIG recommended that SBA review the $1.3 billion disbursed, recover ineligible or fraudulent funds and strengthen controls; management partially agreed with one recommendation and agreed with the other. The $1.3 billion is the amount disbursed on applications from foreign IP addresses, not an adjudicated fraud figure.