The Justice Department has found evidence of fraudulent applications for coronavirus stimulus cash in its preliminary investigation of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), Bloomberg reports. “Whenever there’s a trillion dollars out on the street that quickly, the fraudsters are going to come out of the woodwork in an attempt to get access to that money,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski. The PPP has become an emblem of bungled coronavirus relief and the target of outrage after nationwide chains received tens of millions of dollars in loans while small businesses, the initiative’s intended recipients, were stranded after the initiative ran out of funding. Benczkowski said that applicants were “overstating their payroll costs, overstating the number of employees they’ve had, overstating the nature of their business.”
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