SBA confirms investigations over pandemic assistance fraud

Guam Small Business Administration branch manager Ken Lujan confirms there are five active investigations involving companies in Guam and the CNMI. The businesses are accused of defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program.

"You see, in a sense that they're using someone else's EIN number or they're utilizing some other source of information that's false," he shared. "They've been funded to the point where they actually have the funds, potential fraud could be those who have not received the monies yet but potentially defrauding the government because they falsified information so it could be a combination of the two intentional and actual fraud."

Lujan says he believes there could be more businesses that have attempted to defraud the programs. A little over 2,200 companies in Guam and the CNMI were approved for the PPP, totaling $192 million. The PPP program expired in August.

The EIDL program expires at the end of the year, so businesses can still apply. Since September though, 1,300 were approved for the EIDL totaling $77 million in overall assistance.