GLITCH GIVES LOANS TWICE TO SMALL US BUSINESSES

A technical snafu in a US government system caused many small businesses to receive loans twice or more under a federal aid program to help businesses hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly a dozen people with knowledge of the matter said, Michelle Price and Pete Schroeder reported for Reuters late on June 2, 2020.

The money mistakenly handed out could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars that the government and lenders - which made the loans - have been trying to identify and recover in recent weeks, one of the people briefed on the matter said.

The technical issue and scale of the resulting duplicate deposits made under the Small Business Administration’s $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) have not been previously reported. They are the latest issue to emerge with the massive program, which was designed to keep businesses hurt by the novel coronavirus afloat and their workers employed.

The error was caused by a blind spot in the SBA’s loan processing system which failed to see when some borrowers submitted applications multiple times typically with several different lenders, three of the sources said. Information provided by the sources, which include industry executives and borrowers, as well as Reddit posts, suggest at least 1,020 duplicate deposits were issued. While that is a tiny fraction of funds disbursed under the huge program, it could amount to roughly $116 million dollars based on average loan sizes. #COVID19