Only days ago, the first case confirmed these expectations. Two individuals from New England have been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for allegedly fraudulently seeking PPP loans totaling more than $500,000. The DoJ accuses the individuals of making false statements in their applications and reporting inflated payroll volumes.
As regulators issue warnings to the lending community about the potential for such fraud, banks and FinTechs are on high alert. But there are a lot of moving parts that muddle the picture of PPP loan fraud, according to David Barnhardt, chief experience officer at GIACT.
The PPP loan program was “really quickly put together,” he told Karen Webster in a recent interview. “We’ve already seen reports of regulators who are critical of how lenders handled the granting of the PPP funds.”