KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Republican Attorneys General Association joined Vice President J.D. Vance, Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, along with the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the SBA Office of Inspector General, to announce a surge of criminal enforcement actions targeting fraud in SBA’s small business COVID-era loan programs.
“This administration is taking fraud more seriously than any in the history of the country,” said Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach. “They are also working closely with the states, which is necessary if it is to be successful.”
“Missouri stands shoulder to shoulder with our federal partners ready to claw back waste, fraud, and abuse of public funds, because every dollar recovered is a dollar returned to the people who earned it in the first place. Good government means standing watch over every taxpayer dollar entrusted to us, and that watch only grows sharper when states and the federal government move as one,” said Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway. “We are proud to welcome leaders from across the region and the nation to Missouri, joining forces to make sure the people who steal from taxpayers have nowhere left to run.”
“Republican Attorneys General see the victims of fraud at home every day and aren’t going to let one more cent get sent to crooks in Somalia or Beijing,” said RAGA Executive Director Adam Piper. “Republican AGs are proud to stand alongside the Department of Justice to combat fraud at the roots.”
The Administration announced suspensions for roughly 870,000 people who defrauded the federal government across 45 states and territories, targeting fraud in the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans, totaling about $39 billion. These borrowers are prevented from getting another federal loan.
The announcement builds on an active partnership of Republican AGs and the Administration working together to fight fraud, a direct result of President Donald J. Trump’s creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division at the DOJ, the first new division in twenty years.
Republican AGs have strengthened collaboration among federal, state, and local partners, leveraging modern law enforcement tools to combat the fraud epidemic, and have formed federal-state anti-fraud task forces in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas, and new federal-state cooperation agreements with those states.
Results to date include multiple charges totaling hundreds of millions of dollars related to COVID-era SBA loan fraud, SNAP benefits, Small Business Administration loans, housing benefits, and tax fraud cases.
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