An Illinois mental health worker claimed she was an author who had made $115,000 selling books in 2020 before her side business cratered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A state correctional sergeant at Stateville prison claimed he ran a private security company on the side that brought in $100,000 in 2019 and also was hit hard by the pandemic the next year.
Now, both have been forced to resign, among 41 state employees listed in reports by the Illinois Office of Executive Inspector General as having defrauded the federal Paycheck Protection Program designed to bail out ailing businesses during the pandemic.
The reports say those 41 employees are suspected of ripping off the fraud-plagued PPP program for more than $900,000 in loans. Most of the loans in the program were forgivable, meaning they didn’t need to be repaid as long as they went toward approved purposes.
All of the employees have resigned, many of them several years ago, but the reports weren’t made public until this year.
Almost all of them worked for the Illinois Department of Human Services, many in low-level positions. To get the federal money, they said they owned businesses ranging from beauty salons to catering companies to rideshare operations.
But investigators determined they submitted fake applications and phony tax records to get the PPP loans. Most admitted they turned to other people to fill out the applications for them in return for a cut of their loan proceeds. Those kickbacks averaged more than $2,200, the reports said.
One woman who got an $18,540 loan apparently filed bogus police reports claiming she was a victim of identity fraud in order to cover up her misdeeds.
A man who got a $20,833 loan wrote a letter to state authorities saying he intended to repay the money. He said his loan wasn’t fraudulen, but admitted he lied to investigators about the details of his PPP application, saying he feared he’d lose his 30-year job, which he did.
The Chicago Sun-Times isn’t naming the employees because they haven’t been charged with crimes. Their cases represent a tiny fraction of the estimated $64 billion in fraud in the PPP program in 2020 and 2021.
