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TexasTowelie

(111,278 posts)
Sun Sep 13, 2020, 05:27 AM Sep 2020

Copycat websites, newly minted companies, double dippers cashed in on PPP loans

A suspicious online university whose curriculum appears to be cut and pasted from a European school, two companies with nearly identical websites and two others with practically no internet presence — all five of these businesses are connected to the same Texas man.

And all five received Paycheck Protection Program loans for a total of at least $3.65 million. But should they have?

These companies are among more than 75 businesses that received loans of at least $150,000 from the coronavirus small business relief program but don’t appear to have existed before this spring or to have met other eligibility criteria for the program, which was administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Collectively, the questionable loans, which are publicly reported as a range of values rather than a specific amount, totaled somewhere between $20 million and $50 million.

No state produced more businesses flagged in the analysis than Florida, which accounted for more than one out of every four businesses that fit the pattern.

The questionable loans were flagged in a joint investigation by Miami Herald/McClatchy and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a nonprofit group of journalists and data scientists researching corruption. A number of the businesses have owners with troubled financial pasts, including some with multiple personal bankruptcies and others with convictions for fraud.

Read more here: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/investigations/article245559465.html#storylink=cpy

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