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“Shutdown Small Business, Fund the Powerful: Where Did New Hampshire’s PPP Millions Really Go?”
- NH Muckraker
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
QUESTION
Who received COVID PPP funding in New Hampshire?
ANSWER
POLITICIANS, LAW FIRMS, AND THEIR NGOS
BACKGROUND
These loans were part of the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) created under the CARES Act and administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
PPP data is public and searchable. According to reporting by New Hampshire Public Radio, thousands of New Hampshire businesses received loans, including companies that received $500,000 and up.
EXAMPLES OF WHO GOT FRAUD COVID MONEY IN NH
Autofair Manchester – approx. $2.3 million
Waterville Valley entities – approx. $1.4 million (combined entities listed under that municipality)
Shaheen & Gordon – approx. $1.3 million
North Shore Property Management – approx. $966,500
Anagnost Investments – approx. $824,000
PPP loans were suppose to be available to qualifying businesses, nonprofits, and certain other entities that met payroll and revenue criteria — regardless of political affiliation. Loan size was generally tied to payroll calculations (2.5x average monthly payroll in most cases). Many larger employers therefore qualified for larger loans.
Oversight and Fraud Enforcement
Oversight mechanisms included:
SBA loan certification requirements
2. Bank underwriting through. participating lenders. (Sort of like 2008)
3. Federal audits and reviews
FOLLOW THE MONEY
There have been documented fraud cases nationally and in New Hampshire.
On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus
Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
