No One Compared UI and SBA Fraud Data. It Found $2.25B.
Summary
Two inspectors general -- at the Labor Department and the Small Business Administration -- ran the first-ever check for whether the same people who defrauded pandemic unemployment insurance also defrauded SBA's COVID disaster loans. The match found $2.25 billion in overlapping fraud, including $1.38 billion neither agency had ever flagged on its own, and it happened only because the two watchdogs shared data the two operating agencies themselves never built a mechanism to share.
Two programs, one blind spot
The scale of each program on its own was already enormous. States and the federal government paid more than $888 billion⧉ in pandemic-era unemployment benefits, of which the Department of Labor's Office of Inspector General has identified more than $46.9 billion as potentially fraudulent across six high-risk categories it began flagging in February 2021. The Government Accountability Office⧉ put the true scale higher still, estimating in a September 2023 statistical analysis that pandemic UI fraud likely totaled $100 billion to $135 billion -- 11% to 15% of everything the programs paid out between April 2020 and May 2023.
's COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program disbursed over $400 billion, and 's own inspector general has separately estimated $136 billion of it went to potential fraudsters. Both agencies had, independently, spent years chasing fraud within their own programs. Neither had ever checked whether the fraud overlapped -- because, as the joint report⧉ states plainly, no data-sharing mechanism on potential fraud for UI and EIDL existed between 's Employment and Training Administration (ETA) and during the entire pandemic.
View data as table
| Suspicious-email accounts (3,850 EIDLs) | 387,982,983 | $163.65M in UI payments + $224.33M in EIDL disbursements |
|---|---|---|
| Multistate claimants (11,901 claims) | 933,101,612 | $409.93M in UI payments + $523.17M in EIDL disbursements |
What the match found
ran its own dataset of suspicious UI claims -- filed with flagged email accounts, or by the same Social Security number across multiple states -- against 's list of EIDLs already carrying fraud hold codes. It found 15,751 matched claims worth $1,321,084,595: EIDLs tied to suspicious email accounts accounted for $387.98 million of it, and claimants who filed unemployment claims in more than one state accounted for the larger share, $933.10 million.
then ran a wider version of the same match -- comparing 's fraud data against every COVID-19 EIDL disbursed after 's first three fraud alerts, not just the loans itself had already flagged. That match found $2,250,688,081 in EIDL disbursements tied to people had identified as likely fraudsters. Of that total, $1.38 billion -- 61% -- was fraud neither agency's own controls had caught: money that had passed both 's and 's separate reviews clean, and surfaced only because the two OIGs, working outside their parent agencies, compared notes.
View data as table
| Already flagged (SBA fraud hold codes) | 177,932,998 | 1,124 EIDLs |
|---|---|---|
| Already known (Fraud Landscape white paper) | 689,899,605 | 6,164 EIDLs |
| Newly identified in this match | 1,382,855,478 | 10,971 EIDLs, unknown to either agency until this project |
The agency that bled money didn't want to study fixing it
The report made two recommendations to each agency. ETA said it agreed with the first -- evaluate its own authority to share fraud data with -- but reviewed what ETA had actually done and found it didn't meet the recommendation's intent, leaving the finding marked Unresolved. ETA disagreed outright with the second recommendation, a joint study with on which specific data elements the two programs should exchange to catch future overlap fraud, telling the it has limited resources and must prioritize its areas of focus.
agreed to all three of its own recommendations, but on longer clocks: a September 25, 2026 target to evaluate its data-sharing authority, and September 24, 2027 -- nearly three years after the report -- to complete a joint study with . 's nearest-term commitment was narrower and more urgent: reevaluate eligibility for the 10,971 newly identified fraudulent EIDLs and recover funds from ineligible recipients, targeted for September 26, 2025. That date has already passed; the joint report contains no subsequent public accounting of how much, if any, of the $1.38 billion was actually recovered.
The dollar figures above describe payments each inspector general's data match flagged as potentially fraudulent -- statistical and indicator-based findings, not adjudicated fraud determinations or criminal convictions. The $5.3 billion identified / $1.2 billion recovered recovery split for the broader unemployment insurance program is 's own snapshot as of May 1, 2023, the most recent reachable primary figure; recovery activity may have continued since.
- Two watchdogs, not two agencies, ran the check. and had no mechanism to compare fraud data with each other during the entire pandemic; the $1.32 billion ( ) and $2.25 billion ( ) findings exist only because the two inspectors general built a one-off data-use agreement between themselves.
- Most of the bigger number was previously invisible. Of the $2.25 billion found tied to -identified fraudsters, $1.38 billion -- 61% -- had never been flagged by either agency's own fraud controls before this match.
- Multistate claims outweighed suspicious-email accounts. Within 's own $1.32 billion match, people who filed unemployment claims in more than one state accounted for $933.10 million, more than double the $387.98 million tied to suspicious email accounts.
- ETA rejected the fix aimed at closing this exact gap. 's Employment and Training Administration disagreed with the recommendation to jointly study what data and should share, citing limited resources -- even after the same kind of collaboration had just surfaced $1.3 billion in fraud.
- 's own recovery deadline has already passed. committed to reevaluating eligibility and recovering funds from the 10,971 newly identified fraudulent loans by September 26, 2025; the report contains no later public accounting of how much was recovered.
Sources(2) ▾
- U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General; U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Inspector General, COVID-19: Data Sharing Project Finds Billions Paid to Same Likely Fraudsters Under Both the Unemployment Insurance and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Programs (DOL OIG Report No. 19-25-001-03-315 / SBA OIG Report No. 25-06) (2024-12-05) — The joint report itself. Two independent inspectors general entered a data-use agreement, matched their respective pandemic UI and COVID-19 EIDL fraud-indicator datasets against each other, and reported the cross-program overlap in dollars and case counts (Results, Tables 1-2), the recommendations issued to each agency, and each agency's formal response and self-imposed correction timeline (Analysis of Agency Responses, p.8-13). Read directly; the live URL was reachable without a blocker. oig.dol.gov · original document
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Unemployment Insurance: Estimated Amount of Fraud during Pandemic Likely Between $100 Billion and $135 Billion (GAO-23-106696) (2023-09) — 's independent statistical estimate of pandemic-era UI fraud (cited by the joint report as background, and read directly here as a second, independent primary source) plus its own tally of what states reported recovering versus what they'd already identified as fraudulent. Read directly; the live URL was reachable without a blocker. gao.gov · original document
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For the entire COVID-19 pandemic, the two federal programs that between them paid out more than $1.3 trillion in emergency aid -- unemployment insurance and the Small Business Administration's disaster loans -- had no way to check whether the same person was defrauding both. In December 2024, the inspectors general for the Department of Labor and finally ran that check themselves, outside the two operating agencies entirely. Comparing fraud-indicator datasets under a formal data-use agreement, the two watchdogs' joint report⧉ found $1.32 billion in unemployment and disaster-loan payments made to the same likely fraudsters -- and, in a wider match 's inspector general ran on its own, $2.25 billion, more than 60% of which no agency had ever flagged before.