If you haven’t noticed, PPP loan fraud is becoming more and more common including the Accounting for small businesses area .
The Google search for PPP loan fraud is at an all-time high on Google Trends.
And PPP loan fraud is so out of control that it has actually become a joke over on Twitter.
We’re not sure why people are not taking the government seriously.
Or why they think they can get away with lying about businesses and employees when there are so many ways to easily invalidate their loans such as:
Accounting for small businesses
payroll taxes and
previously filed business returns
Even more, every dollar given to someone under fraudulent circumstances is one less dollar for an actual business that is actually struggling to keep its doors open, and we’re frankly fed up with it.
But, here we are!
So in this post, we’re going to break down exactly how this scam works by taking a look at a few people who have gotten caught so far.
And we say so far because we think we are going to see a flood of new arrests in the upcoming weeks.
These are the stories of those who went cooh-cooh, not for coco puffs, but for PPP.
PPP Loan Fraud Stories
- The Pastor
When you think of someone with over 39 cars, only a few people may come to mind. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg?
But, in this case, you won’t believe this, it’s actually a pastor.
That’s right.
Rudolph Brooks Jr, the pastor of Kingdom Tabernacle of Restoration Ministries in Washington DC, was arrested and accused of using PPP money to buy over 39 cars.
And actually, one of which was a Tesla Model 3.
Now, despite having good taste in cars, here is where things took a turn for the worse.
According to the criminal complaint, he also identified himself as the owner of a business called Cars Direct.
It’s a used car business that he used to apply for PPP loan.
Authorities say that Mr. Brooks opened Cars Direct in 2010 but actually shut it down in 2012, which is only 2 years after starting it.
That was until Brooks allegedly brought the business back to life in May of 2020.
