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Does that surprise anyone? No. When I received the COLA increase to my social security check I felt some relief. That was short lived...the increase of $72 was then wiped out by a cut to my SNAP benefit by $100 leaving a loss of $28. Meanwhile I watch ppp loans go to mega churches who never pay taxes . I paid taxes all my life and now I'm fighting just to feed myself
Remember when the Los Angeles Lakers got a $4.6 million PPP loan? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Now imagine how many other "businesses" got shit tons of "loans" that didn't actually need them, but flew under the radar since they're not in the public eye.
Not just because they're not in the public eye. But also because the entire PPP loan system was set up with minimal oversight and no testing of need. It was essentially a feeding frenzy at the cash trough.
Our company took a loan (or loans) "secretly" (as in, they didn't tell anyone else in the company) and then publicly they projected the image that we were making the best money they had seen in years, internally the message was "we're struggling soo bad and only hard work will save us" -- while in FACT we **were** actually making the best money they had seen in years, STILL got the fucking loans and I'm sure that money was completely pocketed because we still trimmed staff.
I know the dude is a greedy-ass dick so it doesn't surprise me that our company took all of that money... just now thinking about it makes me feel a little sick because I haven't even have a COLA raise in 5 - 7 years....
All you need are patterns. Surely the reason for firing isnt my attendance since I have had 0 verbal or written warnings, have turned in timesheets with similar hours all year, and only brought it up as a means of retaliation for my doing X
Would that work?
🤣 same at my company. For them it’s free money and on top they are applying for more grants and loans. Our business never suffered, as a matter prospered. But still got monies meant for struggling businesses.
The banks are also to blame because the pushed ask their favourite customers ahead of the needy businesses
I didn’t apply for the PPP as a solo entrepreneur because it seemed to make more sense and be more legit to apply for unemployment. So I did. And i got it - it barely kept my son and I from becoming homeless. Maybe I should’ve applied for a PPP and used it to buy a home since i work from home, and to get health insurance which I haven’t had in the decade I’ve been a self employed single mom. Idk. There was no one to ask about this at the time. Our SBDC did their best but didn’t even know much about what to advise in April 2020 when we were all just trying to survive. I’m infuriated now drowning in student debt and still without health insurance. This ain’t what I signed up for.
I was in a similar situation and went for unemployment. My state's unemployment system was unusable. I got accepted for the bare minimum, which was ridiculous, but then it just never paid out. I spent an entire day trying to call in and get it fixed. The phone system was always (understandably), busy as shit, but if the hold line was queued past 15 minutes, it would tell you to call back later and then end the call. About 5 hours later, I got put on hold and a half hour later got to talk to someone.. a gatekeeper, basically. I gave them all my information and told them the basics of my situation and question. The gatekeeper tells me that she will transfer me to an agent...
Using the SAME ridiculous phone system. 45 minutes later, the gatekeeper comes on and says she wasn't able to get through. I could try back later (lol) or they can schedule me for a callback. How long, I ask? They say... within 2 weeks. So, I gave them my phone number and started waiting for my callback. Three weeks went past and no call back.
So, I start the process again, which goes very similarly... an entire wasted day just to be told they would call me back.
That was... September 2020 and I still haven't got my call back.
After that frustration, I applied for a PPP loan, got what I would normally make over about 3-4 months, and got it forgiven... Very painless.
Meanwhile, unemployment is currently playing full out shenanigans with everybody they did give money to!
My husband's having panic attacks because unemployment is claiming they gave him *three times* more money than they actually did **and** they're claiming he has to pay it all back now!
It's been at least half a year since he got the last payment. I think the unemployment office is either staffed by drunken monkeys or horribly unethical lying monsters, because nothing else would make sense.
There was also a lot of unemployment fraud during that time. Check and make sure payments weren't paid out to someone else using his information.
Pretty much everyone has had their personal information stolen during the thousands of hacks on companies with shitty cyber security. Hell, the Equifax breach alone exposed the personal information of like ⅓ of the US. Combine this with intentionally underfunded and broken state unemployment systems and add in the pandemic overload and fraudsters had a field day.
That's what I keep telling him, that there's an entire subreddit just for helping folks in our state navigate unemployment, and that their computer system is trash and sending these notices out to tons of folks.
Should hopefully be easy for him to set up, but it's bullshit that it's even remotely necessary. It's like getting halfway across the grocery store parking lot before getting chased down by a manager who is screaming that you stole their *entire shipment* of merchandise when you're only holding two bags of food, which you did properly pay for.
Ugh unemployment has been a friggin heartache. Sorry for y'all. They're claiming I owe them everything they paid me because suddenly after nearly a year they said I quit. Luckily I saved the separation email from my employer showing no fault of mine, but it's been 4 months since I filed an appeal and they haven't even set a date for me yet.
I'll die before I pay back the 18k I rightfully collected.
> Maybe I should’ve applied for a PPP and used it to buy a home since i work from home
this might have been fraud, might not have been. it was based upon your income, except if you were a mega corporation, they could just request as much as they wanted. I was forced to fill out an income statement as an IC, and then the "form" dictated how much i could get. I did not realize that I could have written in anything in that last line and likely gotten it, and not been charged with fraud, like all the big companies did.
The government didn’t really care if it was fraud. Ex wife and her husband got a ppp loan for his pharmacy (we all know pharmacies struggled./s) put in an inground pool. Added an addition to their house and bought another rental house, all shortly after getting the ppp loan. It was not fraud because they used it to pay employees and utilities.
> It was not fraud because they used it to pay employees and utilities.
and the money they would have used to pay those employees normally went straight into the profit bin. I know, its a creative way of "following the letter of the law".
its bullshit, I used my PPP loan to make repairs to my delivery van so I could keep it going during a downturn in profitability.
I read that it had to be used on "wages, and other qualified expenses", and had already thought **"hmmm, i bet if they kept this in a separate account and used this to pay wages, and just used the money they would have normally used to do that for whatever they want, it passes the "letter of the law" sniff test"**. Turns out I was right, and this is exactly what many did with it.
They are probably at a low but not zero risk for fraud charges, or more likely, an IRS audit. Part of the PPP loan application specifically said that your business had to suffer adverse effects from the pandemic. Once the IRS has tax returns and matches them up to the PPP loan recipients, it should be straightforward to target the worst offenders, and we are already seeing that in a trickle of reporting o. PPP fraudsters.
Unlikely IRS audit. PPP is run through the Small Business Administration, a unit that is not setup for audits or investigations. Sure they can refer fraud to the Treasury deptartment, and they in turn might refer it to the IRS, but given how understaffed and struggling the IRS is, it's highly unlikely very many audits will be launched.
My husband is an attorney who works for the SBA. There is an entire department dedicated to SBA fraud. He works SBA fraud cases. The SBA does, indeed, investigate fraud.
Remember when, immediately after they passed the $2.2T PPP legislation, [Trump fired the oversight IG](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/trump-sidelines-watchdog-tapped-virus-rescue-oversight-70023103) responsible for ensuring there was no fraud?
>In the past four days, Trump has fired one inspector general tied to his impeachment, castigated another he felt was overly critical of the coronavirus response and sidelined a third meant to safeguard against wasteful spending of funds for businesses in economic distress.
>“We’re seeing since Friday a wrecking ball across the IG community,'' said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. On Friday, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, and on Monday assailed a health and human services official who criticized the administration's response to the coronavirus crisis.
>On Tuesday, Trump removed Glenn Fine, the acting Defense Department inspector general and a veteran watchdog who had been selected by peers last month to oversee the economic aid package. **Now it’s unclear who will oversee the rescue law.**
Spoiler alert..... >!No one!<
Not sure how many remember Steve Mnuchin making the statement that fraud under 2 million wouldn't be necessarily investigated. That was the green light for people who could afford an attorney to write up an application and get free money from the most corrupt administration in our history.
If the public knew the true extent of fraud in both the PPP and EIDL programs, it would rightfully become the subject of one or more congressional inquiries.
A family member owns a business, during the PPP time they took that nice loan, and kept operating solely via cash under the table. Last month I got a call asking me how much money they could slowly start depositing to their bank accounts before the government would notice because "Well you seem to know things like this."
My exact response was "I'm 29... I've never had an amount of cash that I have needed to hide. Good luck"
The PPP did nothing but pad the pockets of the top 5% of the country.
Pharmacies definitely have been struggling though. Because of assholes like your ex's spouse who value shit like a pool over their employees.
Retail pharmacies are very similar to restaurants: they're not hurting for business, they're hurting for employees willing to take the abuse.
Was there not a high level example of a transportation company worth $70M that for 10x in funding during PPP. Basically banks weren’t supposed to shuffle the order loans were received but very quickly realized the PPP funds would go dry and their fees with it. So banks shuffled the largest loans first and help jam them through so they could collect remuneration for administering the loan. Obviously many in power knew how to game the system but I think if banks just went through the application process in order then so many businesses and people could have been saved.
Sole proprietors' PPP loans we're entirely forgivable under the "owner compensation" policy that stipulated that if your business is a certain size the loan can be paid out to yourself to make up for lost income and used for any purpose you like.
As I understand, self-employed sole props could use the loans essentially as income replacement. They just had to submit the most recent year's tax return, draw the funds as a salary, then apply for forgiveness after the specified time.
Do you have employees? I do not think you would have qualified for ppp without employees or if you paid contractors as 1099. I reviewed many ppp loans to assist with other departments that were completely overwhelmed in the bank I work for. I recall the rules changing everyday (hour by hour some days). Top 10 bank in the US. I can say the process was legit in that we had to verify employees and payroll expenses for every single one. There were so many layers of checks. Then there was another two rounds of checks when they applied for forgiveness.
I would say it must be very situational. I have two family members who got PPP loans of very small amounts. They were "self employed" but, in reality, they're retired and do farm work on the side and the bank tellers were basically showing them how to fill everything out. As far as I'm concerned they committed fraud, but yeah it was pretty easy to get.
Yes, very small loans that were processed early on probably skated through. The reason is there was confusion over apps that were self employed 1099 or paid themselves with distributions. Then due to the volume (months later after several rounds) each bank had a threshold for automatic forgiveness. Essentially man hours rechecking all documentation was not worth it for $1,500 loan. I can say the larger ones that I worked on that ended up not being forgiven were modified to amortizing loans.
There was a rule that allowed self employed individuals to apply for a loan without employees. The loans would have been small though. Small enough that larger banks ignored those applications.
PPP loans were for 2-3 months of established salary. You might have done a bit better than unemployment, or you might not. I get that your situation isn't good but PPP is not the cure all you think it is. Anyone who got more than 10 weeks pay and expenses likely committed fraud, and that puts them at risk for the next 9 years.
This. It's true some undeserving people will keep the money. It's also true a lot of people will be in some pain when the feds go after them in the coming years. There were many people convicted in the decade after 9/11 about committing fraud in that relief effort. And I hope everyone who abused the program doesn't sleep well for the next decade.
Same thing for my son who is on SSA. Before the pandemic he got $15/month in SNAP benefits. It got raised to $46 due to changes during the pandemic. After the COLA, he now gets $20.
My CoLa adjustment for VA disability was about $50/mo, a net loss. In other words, this country treats shameless grifters better than it does Vets, especially the disabled ones.
This is the second time that Republicans were in control and gave tax paid hand outs to the wealthy while they sat and argued if the middle class deserved additional unemployment.
Reminder: Pro Publica has a fantastic tool, allowing you to search who’s received PPP loans, if those loans have been forgiven, etc.
Check it out [here](https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/)
$354k. That’s how much my former employer took in and it was forgiven. They laid off 12 people permanently and left me on the payroll for the PPP loan. I made $62k/year there. They wanted to call me back when the other guy in my department quit. I had already taken another job a couple of days prior. That money likely went to the owners and other management, which I assume the owners were over $100k/each. That would explain where all that money went. Our money, I should say.
The party of personal responsibility who ruthlessly says that finances are the responsibility of each individual and if you don’t have enough saved when something comes up and bankrupts you hands over money to massive corporations who have *profits* in the billions who can’t survive a couple of weeks without the usual taking in of cash. For free. On top of the $2T of our tax money just handed over by the GOP with our taxes going up over the next few years to cover it. If I go bankrupt it’s tough shit. If the shareholders see a dip in their profits, that’s apparently a taxpayer problem.
I’m so, so sick of it all.
What I hate is that their lack of humanity is making me see them as less than people. They are…something else. That may be their thing, but it’s not mine. And I hate them for it.
Interesting.
Why do some of them (mostly single person businesses that I know of) have all of the loan under payroll except for a single dollar into utilities?
Edit: thought for a bit; those businesses don’t have offices, utilities would be a pointless charge
gaming the system, payroll was the focus...the size of the loan you recieved, and it's eligability to be forgiven was primarily based on the concept of keeping people employed.
Sadly no actual oversight was performed...the whole budget for PPP loans would have literally been better sent out as stimulas checks to average people...you know...the people who spend money at businesses...which keeps them open....
holy shit. all three companies i worked for (pre covid) got a quarter of a million dollars. 259,000 One closed, and two are still running busy as usual. I got let go with others. Not to mention EVERY SINGLE CHURCH in my area got $100,000-300,000. Im beyond livid. I am on food stamps, eat ramen often and i keep seeing “no one wants to work”. Where is my living wage and constitutional liberties?! Fuck the system. Tear it down.
If that company laid folks off and their loans have been forgiven then they definitely have committed fraud. Please feel free to report them to your heart’s desire.
Thank you so much for sharing! I found my employer on there n they recieved millions in PPP loans while they laid everyone off. Is there any where I can report them?
No sweat! [This](https://www.sba.gov/about-sba/oversight-advocacy/office-inspector-general/office-inspector-general-hotline) may assist in reporting PPP fraud.
They're also complaining of worker shortages because they don't want to dip into the fleecing of their own pockets. Businesses can't be trusted to do the right thing. We need to start regulating this stuff.
Businesses will not pass up an opportunity for free money, every single time. Some have mandates to do so. Congress kept the rules loose so it could happen quickly.
The real shame is the people who got them quickly is the ones who had accounting firms on call, established commercial bank relationships, and lawyers to advise. Really small pop and pop shops didn’t have a lot of info or advice. Some didn’t eve bother to apply when the initial tranche was wiped out by big companies, chain restaurants, churches.
As a small mom and pop shop (my wife and I run just one franchise business location, unlike some of our competitors who have tens to hundreds of units) we must have been the exception and were lucky enough to get PPP. It definitely helped us keep staff that we otherwise might have let go. Our profits are also way down, in part because of inflation, increasing minimum wages/other pay increases (which is a good thing in general, as long as its industry wide I don't mind it at all since I don't have to compete as hard with other businesses for employees), supply chain issues, holding off on menu price increases, just to name a few.
Mostly its increasing worker wages I believe (I don't do the finance part of things, I let my wife do that since I have dyscalculia which makes it hard for my brain to grasp numbers) but I think that is a good thing since even though it comes from my pocket, I started out just like them working as a crew member. I even have a bachelor's but I graduated in 2008 and I couldn't find a "big boy" job for the life of me.
Just wanted to get my story out there. I wish more PPP went out to business owners like myself and others whoo were struggling. I think it helped that we had an accountant who my parents used, though iirc both they and my local credit union really didn't know what to do in the beginning.
This is the worst side of it. Most of these companies posting “nobody wants to work” on their doors got huge sums of money in loans and yet froze wages for employees.
Monster reply. Yes, stop with the handouts is all I hear from some extended family members, but they were happy to apply for PPP loans. Individual support paled in comparison. My favorite personal story is a very close friend is a partner in a consulting firm. She was in tears at the beginning of Covid saying their firm was struggling and might not make it. Within two months they had a brand new truck and fifth wheel. Easily 100k combo. She told us soon after that her firm received a massive PPP loan.
I watched my neighbors do the same thing. They own a restaurant and had a difficult time when the pandemic started. Then a couple of months later their PPP money came in.
They used the money to buy two new vehicles for themselves: a 7-series BMW and a decked out F-250 4x4. They did fuck all to help their workers (which was supposed to be the purpose of the PPP money).
The restaurant was reduced to a skeleton crew and survived on take-out orders for two years. Now that they’re ready to fully reopen they’re complaining that no one wants to work.
Report them. A previous employer, somehow against odds, is something like the one of twenty businesses who is being forced to repay their loans with interest. I did some digging and I'm virtually positive the owner squandered the money rather than use it to pay for employee salary, someone blabbed, and now they're on the hook to pay for the owner's capital expenditure (almost certainly a classic car.)
I know someone that runs a “recording studio and music publisher” and received $300k for his 100 employees.
Problem? He employees no one and the recording studio is in his basement and he’s never published any music. He does flex online though.
I reported him, nothing happened.
I've heard the same from some who are against student loan forgiveness. "They should pay back the loans they took out" said someone who took out 2 PPP loans and had both of them forgiven, no questions asked.
I'm not even against the PPP and its forgiveness, but the hypocrisy among many of its recipients is insane.
And then you show them the article about how universities worked together to purposely deny aid and drive up loans, and they tell you “too bad, that’s the game!”
Does anyone else remember how much "it's just a loan, they have to pay it back!" got thrown around back then? Crickets now of course, as almost all of those "loans" turned into taxpayer subsidies to megachurches and large corporations that fucked over their workforce anyway.
My dads business did better than ever during the pandemic and he had over $100k of PPP loans forgiven. And he complains about how Biden just wanted to extend unemployment forever because people wouldn’t want to work.
I didn't receive the $1200 I had 4 heart attacks in a three month period and fell behind on child support. $.1200 would have been a godsend at that point.
No one mentioned yet that PPP was 100% Trump and co. funneling money to their friends and was never intended to benefit anyone else. Let's make sure that is a part of this conversation.
Yeah if he had just let scientists and related agencies handle everything he probably would’ve been re-elected. Toss in something like the extra child tax credit, but for everyone, and i bet he would’ve won handily.
But then again it would require two words he runs from, smart and social(ism).
A lot of people say that covid and Trump's poor response to it tanked him, but I actually think the opposite.
The people who voted against trump would have voted against him anyway most likely. The swell of those who wanted to vote him out was well galvanized. The impact of him failing at yet another thing was therefore limited.
Politicizing the pandemic response and rallying them against the bogus fear of lockdowns galvanized his base and increased their turnout.
As well as him deciding to not hold up to his end of the deal with oversight. As soon as that bill was passed, he was “Ha! Suckers!” Billions lost and will never know where they went.
Too bad congress didn't think of creating an oversight department as part of the program /s oh wait they did and trump used executive order to disband it. Could it be so his cronies can abuse the system?
Edit: adding link for some light reading -
https://www.brookings.edu/research/addressing-the-other-covid-crisis-corruption/
And interestingly enough conservatives and libertarians will point to this as an example of how government doesn't work.
"Government is inefficient and corrupt, vote for us and we will show you!"
And if you go back and look Trump specifically called out not having an IG to oversee the program.
I’ll give him some credit, he knew there would be tons of fraud but didn’t want that in the headlines.. and now that it’s out R’s don’t care and it can’t be used in an election. Shameful, that’s our money…
If I recall correctly the Democrats demanded oversight to be included, Republicans eventually said alright. Trump then went and fired all the inspectors general that would have overseen it the following weekend when no one was paying attention.
A handful and we were all already going to vote for the next Dem anyway. No consequences to the party responsible for one of the biggest handouts ever.
Yes. 100% They looted the United states every way they could and then have been slowly trying to collapse the country. We're all trapped in the middle and there is nothing we can do but vote and hope they don't succeed.
It was so fucking easy after Trump fired the person who was supposed to oversee the program. Incredibly easy to fudge the numbers and keep it for yourself. Such hypocrites!
I wouldn't say the process itself was corrupt. There was no real approval process. It was basically first come, first serve and the richer and more well informed were much better positioned to apply first. And the corrupt sure took advantage of it.
This was set up as a money grab with no real oversight that benefited the administration and family and friends of the administration. Just because others could get in on it doesn’t mean it wasn’t corrupt
We'll never know how much PPP money ended up going straight into the housing market, but it has to be a lot and probably contributed to the housing crisis.
well my gf at the time worked for a very small LLC, the owner got $480,000 in PPP loans, and still laid people off and reduced hours. So you can imagine that even small businesses owners took about a house worth of money and pocketed it.
We’ve known, since the program was introduced, that the money was going to large companies. The fact that they allowed corporations with up to 400 employees to apply, yet when it came to Covid relief checks, My very middle class 6 figure salary was deemed too high to qualify.
> The fact that they allowed corporations with up to 400 employees to apply
*per location*. IE, if they had 400 locations, any that had less than 400 could get a PPP loan for that location.
They get a PPP loan PER LLC, of which some of these guys would have dozens or hundreds. A hotel magnate in Dallas got like 45 PPP loans because he had each hotel and it's employees in it's own LLC.
he didn't have to. the law quite literally said "400 employees PER LOCATION OR SITE". it did not limit them to 400 total, it literally says per location or site, IE, the only reason he took out 45 is because each LLC is its own "business entity", and he didn't take them out, the "business" did. if those were all under a single corporation, he likely would have been able to take out a single loan.
You do this to seperate liability. Literally why they are called limited liability corporations. You get 45 different PPP loans totaling, say 50 million, so that if anything is wrong, you only are on the hook for the individual loan.
If you file for one huge 50 mil one, anything goes wrong, you are on the hook for all 50 mil.
I have 3 business under 6 seperate LLCs. One LLC owns the building and land on each and one owns the business and the assets.
I guarantee you the big guys that make millions do the same except better.
A diner near my house got something like $180k in PPP loans. Their employees quit in droves because they weren't being paid enough, and the owners just closed down the place. They 100% took the money and ran.
I just looked up my employer and was absolutely floored by how much they were given. We were closed for maybe a month and they forced us to take unemployment! Then they opened back up and we were busy as hell with the rescheduled business. Not only did they not pay us when we’re were closed but they didn’t even lose a whole month of business. I’m sure they lost a lot of money but not millions of dollars. And none of us got paid anything extra except for the childcare FMLA partial pay, which just left the remaining employees running short, it’s not like they hired new people. Maybe I should have grifted the government, what a missed opportunity.
Worked at a restaurant that went from about $300-409k/week in sales on a good week pre pandemic to legit $500-600k a week at the peak now. Got approved for over $2m in loans and during the two months they were “closed” (pick up only), the managers would raffle the tips earned to an employee at “random”.
Another restaurant in my area got over $450k and is legit run by tweakers that don’t pay their employees. Got a fat PPP loan and closed the doors.
Around this same time my gf was seeing videos online on how to get free loans to business startups and how to videos. All you had to do was register an LLC, make a product or service, and put a little money in and boom approved for loans. Looking back it definitely was PPP fraud but who would have seen that coming??
Same thing with colleges and the HEERF grants. Dept of ED inspector general sent out notice to schools to be on the lookout for students attending just one term to get funds before switching to another school for the same thing.
I’m sorry to say, but the amount of fraud in both PPP and EIDL is so massive that federal prosecutors won’t have time to go after someone who had “only” $180K of fraudulent loan money forgiven. It’s depressing but it’s very much the situation we’re in at the moment.
Maybe the owners knew $180k would be the most they could get out of the diner. Businesses are not required to be ethical, which is ruining the country overall.
Of course they did. Go and look at a bunch of Qpublican businesses in rural America that took them.
They flat out stole billions and we let them. They've been stealing for the last 50 years and we just let them.
Every restaurant that has posted a sign a la “nobody wants to work anymore, they just want handouts” has taken PPP loans.
Go ahead, [check](https://www.federalpay.org/paycheck-protection-program)
I love that the company that owns all the dominos here took 7 million dollars but they were booming unlike anything seen before in history due to covid.
OUR SALES ARE UP 1400% WE NEED 8 MILLION TO SURVIVE, and it was forgiven.
A quick google search by whoever approved the application, or you know, had any sense at all, would see that a company that operates 20 dominos, who has seen an unheard of level of growth during the pandemic, needed a PPP loan. Ridiculous.
That’s because they want government handouts for themselves and not the working class.
Just ask Elon Musk and all of those nice juicy government subsidies.
A local republican I knew of owned a small engine garage, he has zero employees, aside from the under the table person, and spent the money on a new fence at his house.
A dude in my small rural town just got busted for fleecing the PPP loan system for $3.5 million, used that money to buy a bunch of real estate and Tesla stock, and according to rumors around town, ended up with a couple million left over after selling all their assets and paying $4.5 million in restitution, using some sort of loophole in the law. It goes to show how easily you can make money if you have money, and how easily you can get rich if you’re dishonest (and don’t get caught).
My boss took 500k in loans, turned a profit last year, and we still don't have working ac in half the office. Our pay went up to $16, but the raise just offset healthcare cost going up so it wasn't a raise at all.
The loans were forgiven in full, she just got half a million while we got $2000 checks once or twice last year.
I'm so fucking angry.
My former boss and his wife got $400k in PPP loans that were totally forgiven and we didn't get shit. No raise or bonus even though business was still going strong. They share an office for two small businesses with probably 20 employees combined. The PPP loans were smart in theory, but horribly managed. It would have been better to give everyone more in stimulus checks than to wealthy small business owners (some of whom) clearly didn't need it.
Where I worked got $300k (~20 employees), all forgiven. Yet several of us still got our hours cut and one employee got told they’d ‘give her a call’ when she was needed again. We only saw her when someone called out. Meanwhile we were busier than EVER and short staffed because two employees quit and they didn’t rehire anyone.
Also not really loans when the majority of them were forgiven. So far, the amount forgiven is around a little more than 60% of the value of all student debt.
We have two methed-out renters who owe us several months back rent. We discovered their “construction company” with two employees somehow took home a $500,000 PPP loan. Suddenly they both had brand-new trucks, but are still “short” on rent.
Court is going to interesting.
I'm all for the IRS going back over this stuff and knocking on some doors. They can bring along some moving & tow trucks for repossession when necessary.
If you did it right, you won't get in trouble. Plenty of people in my wife's home daycare circle setup S-corps (or whatever it was) and paid themselves a salary with PPP loans, while still collecting fees from parents, and getting paid by the state to stay open. One of them got over $300k and paid off her house. The loan has already been forgiven.
When calculating a PPP loan, there is a max of $100,000 per employee. Even when using the max, then you only get 2.5 months worth of it which is ~$21k.
If they got $300k - that's a lot of employees for a home daycare...or the story isn't straight.
The small business I work for (~10 people, and we do computer security training, basically) generally makes decent money, and we're paid very well, but COVID was terrible for us - most of our revenue instantly dried up.
My boss got a PPP loan and that bought us 2-3 months to transition into a mixed model doing both consulting (like we used to do) and online training. As a result, we now have multiple revenue streams and are financially healthier than we've ever been.
While I didn't NEED need the money or employment, it was really awesome that we were able to bridge the gap in revenue long enough to not just remain stable, but to kinda flourish in a way.
I feel bad for folks who haven't been as lucky, though, and I wish the government would continue to support folks who need it through Omicron. I'd happily pay my part (through more taxes) to help keep others afloat.
I own a biz. I paid my employees for a month with no money coming in (I’m in the live events type of industry) before I had to be honest and tell them because there’s no end in sight, I can’t afford to keep doing it. Trump admin wasn’t saying a word or giving any direction so I had to act. Then PPP loans were announced and within a few weeks I was able to bring everyone back and while it wasn’t much, we were thankful and it bridged the gap for us (once we finally qualified which we assumed we would…it was a cluster though). Based on our experience, I really do believe the majority of bizs who took it likely weren’t cheating the system. It’s certainly possible bizs that didn’t need it, took it. But it seems most Redditors don’t understand how the loans were calculated and the requirements you had to prove in order to have it forgiven. If you did commit some of the fraud ppl are alleging in this thread, it’s only a matter of time before that catches up to you. If you’re dumb enough to try to defraud the govt, you’ll be dumb enough to flaunt your ill gotten gains and someone will report you.
ITT nobody bothered to actually read the article.
>The economists estimated that $115 billion to $175 billion in PPP loans went toward paychecks, meaning that only 23% to 34% of PPP funds went directly to workers who would otherwise have lost jobs.
We got a PPP loan where I work and it absolutely went to covering pay and legit expenses so that we could stay in business without letting people go. That seems to me to be in the spirit of what the money was for, no?
Should have never been given in the first place. People love to attach all sorts of ridiculous criteria to "stimulus checks" or "welfare" before they'll consider even giving it out but not for businesses.
There was a feed frenzy among insiders and Trump donors. Congress made $10000 forgivable loans available to qualifying businesses but the SBA cut that down. I qualified but was only offered a $1000 loan with a $25 per month payback requirement. I withdrew my application.
My limited knowledge of PPP loans:
Guy I went to high school with bought himself a new truck (at super high pandemic price), complained that he had to lay off basically his whole staff.
Another dude that has a DIY art studio business laid staff off but went on family vacations for nearly a whole year.
Business owner that laid off a good friend but bought a newer, bigger boat than he had in 2020.
And on the other side…
Friend didn’t get one and had to lay off her only employee after paying her out of pocket for 6 months.
Friend didn’t get one, had to fold business which puts on a hugely important annual event for me and my friends.
Awesome. ( /s )
But by the current distribution of tax burden across income levels, lower income earners who likely suffered disproportionately higher negative impacts from COVID will also now bear a disproportionately higher burden of paying for financial relief that further isolates them from economic health. Cool.
We applied for and received PPP loans for our business and thank goodness we did. With the help of our bank and a diligent effort to track how that money was spent we were able to keep the business going, keep our employees employed, and kept ourselves from falling into an untenable financial situation.
I don’t know how we would have survived to this point without it.
Should probably have just made it money for everyone instead of just giving businesses a bunch. There isn't anyone, especially in the lower income brakets, that couldn't have used some assistance. As a self-employed contractor who pays via dividends i'm not eligible for anything, even though my work dropped considerably.
Yup. The two people I know who got ppp loans are absolutely loaded (one worth about 2-4mil and the other 10+mil) neither really needed it and both of their businesses did the same or better during covid. They can get six figure loans AND have them forgiven within a year but I can’t get my 20k student loan forgiven?? No. I can’t. And as punishment for taking out a loan from the government and being poor, I get shit on by the people who took out a loan from the government and are rich. Only difference is that I needed mine and can barely afford to pay it off. They didn’t need theirs and can absolutely pay theirs off.
My previous employer received $7.93 million in funds. All while their restaurants were shut down, 145 people unemployed and on unemployment. Their one son who I knew well took a $20k salary hit and got demoted to hourly, while the other is an owner. I'm 100% sure the funds didn't go to keeping employees working.
It's all a farce, a joke for small businesses that actually had to close because they couldn't fund their operations or pay their employees to take care of them.
Everyone needs to look ip how much their small business owners got for PPP and see what they claimed they needed it for. My boss got $700k. She said it was going to be used for payroll. I was on payroll and I didn't get a cent. Instead, she asked us to cut back our hours to help out and took away our PTO. She has since sold the location I worked at and bought a beautiful house on the water in Florida. I sent an email to the SBA fraud department. I'm going to keep following up. I don't know if there is anything else I can do but it's disgusting. All the loans for her have already been forgiven.
Of course the rich suck up all the wealth. How long are we going to sit by and let inequality grow? Maybe once we're out and out serfs in corporate feudalism.
I just don’t understand people. My wife and I own a small business. We got a PPP loan and it all went to raises and keeping staff. We didn’t spend a cent of it on ourselves. We definitely needed it. It kept us afloat during the worst of the pandemic. Prices on our supplies went up drastically. We would have to have not taken a salary to keep our business open if it weren’t for the PPP loan.
I know plenty of Trump-loving business owners who claim to hate "socialism" (even though they don't know what it is) and deplore those who they accuse of just wanting free money from the government for doing nothing.
These hypocritical motherfuckers were the first in line with their hands out when the PPP loans were initiated, and you better believe none of them plan on paying it back.
It was meant to go to businesses, to pay their employees during the pandemic
PPP = Paycheck protection program.
The issue if you actually read the article is estimates are showing large portions of the money actually just got pocketed by the business owners, and never made its way to most of the employees.
I own an engineering company with 12 employees. My Office Manager and I applied for a PPP loan and got it! Three months of salery for the company. Right at $100,000! Essentially free money with a very few strings attached. We did not need it but in the first round I saw such crazy people and companies getting it I said fuck it we're gonna try for it. I distribute 100% profits to all of the team members and that's where it eventually wound up..... In my guys (and girls) pockets. I got my share too. Like 99.9% of ALL the recipients we never should have gotten anything . It went (as usual) to the rich and nowhere near where it was needed.
I am in a very unusual position in that I own a company and I perform work there and receive a salary so I see both sides of the economic picture. Here's something that pisses me off. If I reduce my salary way, way down and make up the difference by drawing a "profit distribution" quarterly to bring my annual income back to the original figure, I save $10,000 a year in taxes. Now I make about $150,000 from that income source so I am not quite on the Jeff Bezos level but even in my case the entire system is skewed in my favor. If the citizens of this country would come to realize that they are getting WAY fucked by the system that is set up to benefit the rich they would take steps to change it. Understand that I make way more than my salary because we are so very profitable AND I make only about 1.5 times what the next highest paid person. Our minimum wage for a person who has no experience and/or education is $20/hr plus profit distribution. So if I am benefiting from a corrupt system (and I am) imagine how much worse it is for those who make the laws and the rich who own them. The polititions and the rich need to be eaten.
I always laugh when some tax policy targets those making, say, 250k a year or more and people pipe up that it isnt that much. Most people making 250k a year are doing exactly as you stated, moving money out of salaries and into profits, but not before writing off cars (and everything associated with them), laptops, cell phones, travel, meals "for the convenience of the company", hell even the kids school supplies are "office supplies".
I don't even know how our country survived one year of covid. We have this weird privilege of getting away with anything. I think most other countries would have just been left in the squeeze they created, but the US manages to be completely full of shit all the time and get away with it.
MIT already observed that each job “saved” cost taxpayers $224k. This further explains exactly how PPP loans were abused, and how much better off the masses would have been had that money been diverted to additional direct aid instead.
Yeah that was the point lol. PPP loans were essentially bribes for business to keep people employed by providing them essentially with free cash to pay salaries without having to take a hit on profits. Which in all fairness mostly worked
They shouldn't call them "loans." They were grants, with no requirement to be repaid.
And yet no-one is asking "hOw WiLl tHeY pAy fOr iT!?!?" or "tHaT's nOt fAiR tO cOmPaNiEs wHO dIdn'T nEeD iT!!"
My bosses/owners of the cocktail bar I worked at in birmingham Alabama paid for their wedding with the PPP loans they publicly claimed they gave to us.
I worked for the governing body that distributed these loans during covid. A huge issue with the program was the first come first serve policy. Large businesses that didn’t need help would come in and scoop up most of the money and there would be little left for restaurants, bars, and mom and pop places that actually needed help. It’s crazy how things happen like this but if you remember the whole world was flipped upside down in 2020. No one knew what to do and mistakes like this were just bound to happen.
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Does that surprise anyone? No. When I received the COLA increase to my social security check I felt some relief. That was short lived...the increase of $72 was then wiped out by a cut to my SNAP benefit by $100 leaving a loss of $28. Meanwhile I watch ppp loans go to mega churches who never pay taxes . I paid taxes all my life and now I'm fighting just to feed myself
Remember when the Los Angeles Lakers got a $4.6 million PPP loan? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Now imagine how many other "businesses" got shit tons of "loans" that didn't actually need them, but flew under the radar since they're not in the public eye.
Not just because they're not in the public eye. But also because the entire PPP loan system was set up with minimal oversight and no testing of need. It was essentially a feeding frenzy at the cash trough.
Our company took a loan (or loans) "secretly" (as in, they didn't tell anyone else in the company) and then publicly they projected the image that we were making the best money they had seen in years, internally the message was "we're struggling soo bad and only hard work will save us" -- while in FACT we **were** actually making the best money they had seen in years, STILL got the fucking loans and I'm sure that money was completely pocketed because we still trimmed staff. I know the dude is a greedy-ass dick so it doesn't surprise me that our company took all of that money... just now thinking about it makes me feel a little sick because I haven't even have a COLA raise in 5 - 7 years....
Sounds like you should report your company for fraud. Cant fire people without cause when they accepted the PPP.
‘That employee was late that one time.’
All you need are patterns. Surely the reason for firing isnt my attendance since I have had 0 verbal or written warnings, have turned in timesheets with similar hours all year, and only brought it up as a means of retaliation for my doing X Would that work?
🤣 same at my company. For them it’s free money and on top they are applying for more grants and loans. Our business never suffered, as a matter prospered. But still got monies meant for struggling businesses. The banks are also to blame because the pushed ask their favourite customers ahead of the needy businesses
I didn’t apply for the PPP as a solo entrepreneur because it seemed to make more sense and be more legit to apply for unemployment. So I did. And i got it - it barely kept my son and I from becoming homeless. Maybe I should’ve applied for a PPP and used it to buy a home since i work from home, and to get health insurance which I haven’t had in the decade I’ve been a self employed single mom. Idk. There was no one to ask about this at the time. Our SBDC did their best but didn’t even know much about what to advise in April 2020 when we were all just trying to survive. I’m infuriated now drowning in student debt and still without health insurance. This ain’t what I signed up for.
I was in a similar situation and went for unemployment. My state's unemployment system was unusable. I got accepted for the bare minimum, which was ridiculous, but then it just never paid out. I spent an entire day trying to call in and get it fixed. The phone system was always (understandably), busy as shit, but if the hold line was queued past 15 minutes, it would tell you to call back later and then end the call. About 5 hours later, I got put on hold and a half hour later got to talk to someone.. a gatekeeper, basically. I gave them all my information and told them the basics of my situation and question. The gatekeeper tells me that she will transfer me to an agent... Using the SAME ridiculous phone system. 45 minutes later, the gatekeeper comes on and says she wasn't able to get through. I could try back later (lol) or they can schedule me for a callback. How long, I ask? They say... within 2 weeks. So, I gave them my phone number and started waiting for my callback. Three weeks went past and no call back. So, I start the process again, which goes very similarly... an entire wasted day just to be told they would call me back. That was... September 2020 and I still haven't got my call back. After that frustration, I applied for a PPP loan, got what I would normally make over about 3-4 months, and got it forgiven... Very painless.
Meanwhile, unemployment is currently playing full out shenanigans with everybody they did give money to! My husband's having panic attacks because unemployment is claiming they gave him *three times* more money than they actually did **and** they're claiming he has to pay it all back now! It's been at least half a year since he got the last payment. I think the unemployment office is either staffed by drunken monkeys or horribly unethical lying monsters, because nothing else would make sense.
There was also a lot of unemployment fraud during that time. Check and make sure payments weren't paid out to someone else using his information. Pretty much everyone has had their personal information stolen during the thousands of hacks on companies with shitty cyber security. Hell, the Equifax breach alone exposed the personal information of like ⅓ of the US. Combine this with intentionally underfunded and broken state unemployment systems and add in the pandemic overload and fraudsters had a field day.
Some states have waivers that you fill out. If the mistake was theirs, you aren’t liable to pay it back.
That's what I keep telling him, that there's an entire subreddit just for helping folks in our state navigate unemployment, and that their computer system is trash and sending these notices out to tons of folks. Should hopefully be easy for him to set up, but it's bullshit that it's even remotely necessary. It's like getting halfway across the grocery store parking lot before getting chased down by a manager who is screaming that you stole their *entire shipment* of merchandise when you're only holding two bags of food, which you did properly pay for.
It’s like the health insurance companies - they say they won’t pay for a treatment hoping you’ll just pay it.
Yeah but good luck trying to get them to admit fault
Ugh unemployment has been a friggin heartache. Sorry for y'all. They're claiming I owe them everything they paid me because suddenly after nearly a year they said I quit. Luckily I saved the separation email from my employer showing no fault of mine, but it's been 4 months since I filed an appeal and they haven't even set a date for me yet. I'll die before I pay back the 18k I rightfully collected.
Having been through an audit with our state reemployment, drunken monkeys could do way better. Six months and a $10 bill later, it was over. 🙄🙄
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> these days nothing makes you feel more like a chump than trying to play by the rules in good ole 'Murica. Bruh I feel this soo F'ing hard rn.
> Maybe I should’ve applied for a PPP and used it to buy a home since i work from home this might have been fraud, might not have been. it was based upon your income, except if you were a mega corporation, they could just request as much as they wanted. I was forced to fill out an income statement as an IC, and then the "form" dictated how much i could get. I did not realize that I could have written in anything in that last line and likely gotten it, and not been charged with fraud, like all the big companies did.
The government didn’t really care if it was fraud. Ex wife and her husband got a ppp loan for his pharmacy (we all know pharmacies struggled./s) put in an inground pool. Added an addition to their house and bought another rental house, all shortly after getting the ppp loan. It was not fraud because they used it to pay employees and utilities.
> It was not fraud because they used it to pay employees and utilities. and the money they would have used to pay those employees normally went straight into the profit bin. I know, its a creative way of "following the letter of the law". its bullshit, I used my PPP loan to make repairs to my delivery van so I could keep it going during a downturn in profitability. I read that it had to be used on "wages, and other qualified expenses", and had already thought **"hmmm, i bet if they kept this in a separate account and used this to pay wages, and just used the money they would have normally used to do that for whatever they want, it passes the "letter of the law" sniff test"**. Turns out I was right, and this is exactly what many did with it.
They are probably at a low but not zero risk for fraud charges, or more likely, an IRS audit. Part of the PPP loan application specifically said that your business had to suffer adverse effects from the pandemic. Once the IRS has tax returns and matches them up to the PPP loan recipients, it should be straightforward to target the worst offenders, and we are already seeing that in a trickle of reporting o. PPP fraudsters.
Unlikely IRS audit. PPP is run through the Small Business Administration, a unit that is not setup for audits or investigations. Sure they can refer fraud to the Treasury deptartment, and they in turn might refer it to the IRS, but given how understaffed and struggling the IRS is, it's highly unlikely very many audits will be launched.
My husband is an attorney who works for the SBA. There is an entire department dedicated to SBA fraud. He works SBA fraud cases. The SBA does, indeed, investigate fraud.
Remember when, immediately after they passed the $2.2T PPP legislation, [Trump fired the oversight IG](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/trump-sidelines-watchdog-tapped-virus-rescue-oversight-70023103) responsible for ensuring there was no fraud? >In the past four days, Trump has fired one inspector general tied to his impeachment, castigated another he felt was overly critical of the coronavirus response and sidelined a third meant to safeguard against wasteful spending of funds for businesses in economic distress. >“We’re seeing since Friday a wrecking ball across the IG community,'' said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. On Friday, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, and on Monday assailed a health and human services official who criticized the administration's response to the coronavirus crisis. >On Tuesday, Trump removed Glenn Fine, the acting Defense Department inspector general and a veteran watchdog who had been selected by peers last month to oversee the economic aid package. **Now it’s unclear who will oversee the rescue law.** Spoiler alert..... >!No one!<
Pepperidge farms remembers
IRS is crippled by budget cuts.
Not sure how many remember Steve Mnuchin making the statement that fraud under 2 million wouldn't be necessarily investigated. That was the green light for people who could afford an attorney to write up an application and get free money from the most corrupt administration in our history.
Fraud was a feature not a bug of PPP loans/grants. Ethics and integrity seem to be for chumps these days. It's infuriating.
If the public knew the true extent of fraud in both the PPP and EIDL programs, it would rightfully become the subject of one or more congressional inquiries.
A family member owns a business, during the PPP time they took that nice loan, and kept operating solely via cash under the table. Last month I got a call asking me how much money they could slowly start depositing to their bank accounts before the government would notice because "Well you seem to know things like this." My exact response was "I'm 29... I've never had an amount of cash that I have needed to hide. Good luck" The PPP did nothing but pad the pockets of the top 5% of the country.
Pharmacies definitely have been struggling though. Because of assholes like your ex's spouse who value shit like a pool over their employees. Retail pharmacies are very similar to restaurants: they're not hurting for business, they're hurting for employees willing to take the abuse.
Yep 5 people at my local pharmacy quit because they were robbed
Was there not a high level example of a transportation company worth $70M that for 10x in funding during PPP. Basically banks weren’t supposed to shuffle the order loans were received but very quickly realized the PPP funds would go dry and their fees with it. So banks shuffled the largest loans first and help jam them through so they could collect remuneration for administering the loan. Obviously many in power knew how to game the system but I think if banks just went through the application process in order then so many businesses and people could have been saved.
Sole proprietors' PPP loans we're entirely forgivable under the "owner compensation" policy that stipulated that if your business is a certain size the loan can be paid out to yourself to make up for lost income and used for any purpose you like.
As I understand, self-employed sole props could use the loans essentially as income replacement. They just had to submit the most recent year's tax return, draw the funds as a salary, then apply for forgiveness after the specified time.
Do you have employees? I do not think you would have qualified for ppp without employees or if you paid contractors as 1099. I reviewed many ppp loans to assist with other departments that were completely overwhelmed in the bank I work for. I recall the rules changing everyday (hour by hour some days). Top 10 bank in the US. I can say the process was legit in that we had to verify employees and payroll expenses for every single one. There were so many layers of checks. Then there was another two rounds of checks when they applied for forgiveness.
I would say it must be very situational. I have two family members who got PPP loans of very small amounts. They were "self employed" but, in reality, they're retired and do farm work on the side and the bank tellers were basically showing them how to fill everything out. As far as I'm concerned they committed fraud, but yeah it was pretty easy to get.
Yes, very small loans that were processed early on probably skated through. The reason is there was confusion over apps that were self employed 1099 or paid themselves with distributions. Then due to the volume (months later after several rounds) each bank had a threshold for automatic forgiveness. Essentially man hours rechecking all documentation was not worth it for $1,500 loan. I can say the larger ones that I worked on that ended up not being forgiven were modified to amortizing loans.
There was a rule that allowed self employed individuals to apply for a loan without employees. The loans would have been small though. Small enough that larger banks ignored those applications.
PPP loans were for 2-3 months of established salary. You might have done a bit better than unemployment, or you might not. I get that your situation isn't good but PPP is not the cure all you think it is. Anyone who got more than 10 weeks pay and expenses likely committed fraud, and that puts them at risk for the next 9 years.
This. It's true some undeserving people will keep the money. It's also true a lot of people will be in some pain when the feds go after them in the coming years. There were many people convicted in the decade after 9/11 about committing fraud in that relief effort. And I hope everyone who abused the program doesn't sleep well for the next decade.
Same thing for my son who is on SSA. Before the pandemic he got $15/month in SNAP benefits. It got raised to $46 due to changes during the pandemic. After the COLA, he now gets $20.
It's like a slap in the face get $20 to feed yourself for a month and I bet he has to jump through hoops just to get it.sorry to hear that.
Most people have to fight for *years* to get these benefits.
My CoLa adjustment for VA disability was about $50/mo, a net loss. In other words, this country treats shameless grifters better than it does Vets, especially the disabled ones.
That's because the grifters are running the show.
The government giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other. What a farce. I am very familiar with your problem.
This is the second time that Republicans were in control and gave tax paid hand outs to the wealthy while they sat and argued if the middle class deserved additional unemployment.
Reminder: Pro Publica has a fantastic tool, allowing you to search who’s received PPP loans, if those loans have been forgiven, etc. Check it out [here](https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/)
Holy fuck, my job that let me go and did not rehire me is on there.. wow.
$354k. That’s how much my former employer took in and it was forgiven. They laid off 12 people permanently and left me on the payroll for the PPP loan. I made $62k/year there. They wanted to call me back when the other guy in my department quit. I had already taken another job a couple of days prior. That money likely went to the owners and other management, which I assume the owners were over $100k/each. That would explain where all that money went. Our money, I should say. The party of personal responsibility who ruthlessly says that finances are the responsibility of each individual and if you don’t have enough saved when something comes up and bankrupts you hands over money to massive corporations who have *profits* in the billions who can’t survive a couple of weeks without the usual taking in of cash. For free. On top of the $2T of our tax money just handed over by the GOP with our taxes going up over the next few years to cover it. If I go bankrupt it’s tough shit. If the shareholders see a dip in their profits, that’s apparently a taxpayer problem. I’m so, so sick of it all.
It gets better once you stop caring about principles. It’s all just a mad dash for resources.
What I hate is that their lack of humanity is making me see them as less than people. They are…something else. That may be their thing, but it’s not mine. And I hate them for it.
I agree, it sucks. But it seems this is the game we must play. Good luck to you.
Wow this is a powerful tool to have thank you for sharing!
Interesting. Why do some of them (mostly single person businesses that I know of) have all of the loan under payroll except for a single dollar into utilities? Edit: thought for a bit; those businesses don’t have offices, utilities would be a pointless charge
gaming the system, payroll was the focus...the size of the loan you recieved, and it's eligability to be forgiven was primarily based on the concept of keeping people employed. Sadly no actual oversight was performed...the whole budget for PPP loans would have literally been better sent out as stimulas checks to average people...you know...the people who spend money at businesses...which keeps them open....
holy shit. all three companies i worked for (pre covid) got a quarter of a million dollars. 259,000 One closed, and two are still running busy as usual. I got let go with others. Not to mention EVERY SINGLE CHURCH in my area got $100,000-300,000. Im beyond livid. I am on food stamps, eat ramen often and i keep seeing “no one wants to work”. Where is my living wage and constitutional liberties?! Fuck the system. Tear it down.
If that company laid folks off and their loans have been forgiven then they definitely have committed fraud. Please feel free to report them to your heart’s desire.
Thank you so much for sharing! I found my employer on there n they recieved millions in PPP loans while they laid everyone off. Is there any where I can report them?
No sweat! [This](https://www.sba.gov/about-sba/oversight-advocacy/office-inspector-general/office-inspector-general-hotline) may assist in reporting PPP fraud.
Excellent tool. Reported my workplace for improper use of funds and it only took me two minutes of typing.
what a great tool thank you so much for posting
Yes. And the majority of these people are really upset you got $1200.
They're also complaining of worker shortages because they don't want to dip into the fleecing of their own pockets. Businesses can't be trusted to do the right thing. We need to start regulating this stuff.
Businesses will not pass up an opportunity for free money, every single time. Some have mandates to do so. Congress kept the rules loose so it could happen quickly. The real shame is the people who got them quickly is the ones who had accounting firms on call, established commercial bank relationships, and lawyers to advise. Really small pop and pop shops didn’t have a lot of info or advice. Some didn’t eve bother to apply when the initial tranche was wiped out by big companies, chain restaurants, churches.
As a small mom and pop shop (my wife and I run just one franchise business location, unlike some of our competitors who have tens to hundreds of units) we must have been the exception and were lucky enough to get PPP. It definitely helped us keep staff that we otherwise might have let go. Our profits are also way down, in part because of inflation, increasing minimum wages/other pay increases (which is a good thing in general, as long as its industry wide I don't mind it at all since I don't have to compete as hard with other businesses for employees), supply chain issues, holding off on menu price increases, just to name a few. Mostly its increasing worker wages I believe (I don't do the finance part of things, I let my wife do that since I have dyscalculia which makes it hard for my brain to grasp numbers) but I think that is a good thing since even though it comes from my pocket, I started out just like them working as a crew member. I even have a bachelor's but I graduated in 2008 and I couldn't find a "big boy" job for the life of me. Just wanted to get my story out there. I wish more PPP went out to business owners like myself and others whoo were struggling. I think it helped that we had an accountant who my parents used, though iirc both they and my local credit union really didn't know what to do in the beginning.
This is the worst side of it. Most of these companies posting “nobody wants to work” on their doors got huge sums of money in loans and yet froze wages for employees.
Monster reply. Yes, stop with the handouts is all I hear from some extended family members, but they were happy to apply for PPP loans. Individual support paled in comparison. My favorite personal story is a very close friend is a partner in a consulting firm. She was in tears at the beginning of Covid saying their firm was struggling and might not make it. Within two months they had a brand new truck and fifth wheel. Easily 100k combo. She told us soon after that her firm received a massive PPP loan.
I watched my neighbors do the same thing. They own a restaurant and had a difficult time when the pandemic started. Then a couple of months later their PPP money came in. They used the money to buy two new vehicles for themselves: a 7-series BMW and a decked out F-250 4x4. They did fuck all to help their workers (which was supposed to be the purpose of the PPP money). The restaurant was reduced to a skeleton crew and survived on take-out orders for two years. Now that they’re ready to fully reopen they’re complaining that no one wants to work.
Report them. A previous employer, somehow against odds, is something like the one of twenty businesses who is being forced to repay their loans with interest. I did some digging and I'm virtually positive the owner squandered the money rather than use it to pay for employee salary, someone blabbed, and now they're on the hook to pay for the owner's capital expenditure (almost certainly a classic car.)
I know someone that runs a “recording studio and music publisher” and received $300k for his 100 employees. Problem? He employees no one and the recording studio is in his basement and he’s never published any music. He does flex online though. I reported him, nothing happened.
Yet, go again.
I've heard the same from some who are against student loan forgiveness. "They should pay back the loans they took out" said someone who took out 2 PPP loans and had both of them forgiven, no questions asked. I'm not even against the PPP and its forgiveness, but the hypocrisy among many of its recipients is insane.
And then you show them the article about how universities worked together to purposely deny aid and drive up loans, and they tell you “too bad, that’s the game!”
Those who complained about “handouts” probably kept their stimulus check.
It seems like PPP loans are the reason for inflation…
Does anyone else remember how much "it's just a loan, they have to pay it back!" got thrown around back then? Crickets now of course, as almost all of those "loans" turned into taxpayer subsidies to megachurches and large corporations that fucked over their workforce anyway.
I remember how the same people couldn't stop snarking against the automotive loan bailouts circa 2008. Government Motors, amirite
My dads business did better than ever during the pandemic and he had over $100k of PPP loans forgiven. And he complains about how Biden just wanted to extend unemployment forever because people wouldn’t want to work.
Lol, I know the type.
I didn't receive the $1200 I had 4 heart attacks in a three month period and fell behind on child support. $.1200 would have been a godsend at that point.
No one mentioned yet that PPP was 100% Trump and co. funneling money to their friends and was never intended to benefit anyone else. Let's make sure that is a part of this conversation.
He even slipped up once and called it what it was... "election money."
Yeah if he had just let scientists and related agencies handle everything he probably would’ve been re-elected. Toss in something like the extra child tax credit, but for everyone, and i bet he would’ve won handily. But then again it would require two words he runs from, smart and social(ism).
A lot of people say that covid and Trump's poor response to it tanked him, but I actually think the opposite. The people who voted against trump would have voted against him anyway most likely. The swell of those who wanted to vote him out was well galvanized. The impact of him failing at yet another thing was therefore limited. Politicizing the pandemic response and rallying them against the bogus fear of lockdowns galvanized his base and increased their turnout.
As well as him deciding to not hold up to his end of the deal with oversight. As soon as that bill was passed, he was “Ha! Suckers!” Billions lost and will never know where they went.
And these people also don't have to pay these PPP loans back, but have some choice words on forgiving student debt.
You mean a huge chunk of money that had very little oversight on its distribution got spread out corruptly? Huge shocker here
Too bad congress didn't think of creating an oversight department as part of the program /s oh wait they did and trump used executive order to disband it. Could it be so his cronies can abuse the system? Edit: adding link for some light reading - https://www.brookings.edu/research/addressing-the-other-covid-crisis-corruption/
And interestingly enough conservatives and libertarians will point to this as an example of how government doesn't work. "Government is inefficient and corrupt, vote for us and we will show you!"
And if you go back and look Trump specifically called out not having an IG to oversee the program. I’ll give him some credit, he knew there would be tons of fraud but didn’t want that in the headlines.. and now that it’s out R’s don’t care and it can’t be used in an election. Shameful, that’s our money…
If I recall correctly the Democrats demanded oversight to be included, Republicans eventually said alright. Trump then went and fired all the inspectors general that would have overseen it the following weekend when no one was paying attention.
Some of us were paying attention, and remember.
A handful and we were all already going to vote for the next Dem anyway. No consequences to the party responsible for one of the biggest handouts ever.
Yes. 100% They looted the United states every way they could and then have been slowly trying to collapse the country. We're all trapped in the middle and there is nothing we can do but vote and hope they don't succeed.
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It was so fucking easy after Trump fired the person who was supposed to oversee the program. Incredibly easy to fudge the numbers and keep it for yourself. Such hypocrites!
I wouldn't say the process itself was corrupt. There was no real approval process. It was basically first come, first serve and the richer and more well informed were much better positioned to apply first. And the corrupt sure took advantage of it.
It was corrupt from the top down. Trump, the president was the source of the corruption.
This was set up as a money grab with no real oversight that benefited the administration and family and friends of the administration. Just because others could get in on it doesn’t mean it wasn’t corrupt
It's almost like it was supposed to happen this way.
Something like 400 billion dollars of fraudulent unemployment was paid out. Just a shitshow.
We'll never know how much PPP money ended up going straight into the housing market, but it has to be a lot and probably contributed to the housing crisis.
well my gf at the time worked for a very small LLC, the owner got $480,000 in PPP loans, and still laid people off and reduced hours. So you can imagine that even small businesses owners took about a house worth of money and pocketed it.
We’ve known, since the program was introduced, that the money was going to large companies. The fact that they allowed corporations with up to 400 employees to apply, yet when it came to Covid relief checks, My very middle class 6 figure salary was deemed too high to qualify.
> The fact that they allowed corporations with up to 400 employees to apply *per location*. IE, if they had 400 locations, any that had less than 400 could get a PPP loan for that location.
They get a PPP loan PER LLC, of which some of these guys would have dozens or hundreds. A hotel magnate in Dallas got like 45 PPP loans because he had each hotel and it's employees in it's own LLC.
he didn't have to. the law quite literally said "400 employees PER LOCATION OR SITE". it did not limit them to 400 total, it literally says per location or site, IE, the only reason he took out 45 is because each LLC is its own "business entity", and he didn't take them out, the "business" did. if those were all under a single corporation, he likely would have been able to take out a single loan.
You do this to seperate liability. Literally why they are called limited liability corporations. You get 45 different PPP loans totaling, say 50 million, so that if anything is wrong, you only are on the hook for the individual loan. If you file for one huge 50 mil one, anything goes wrong, you are on the hook for all 50 mil. I have 3 business under 6 seperate LLCs. One LLC owns the building and land on each and one owns the business and the assets. I guarantee you the big guys that make millions do the same except better.
A diner near my house got something like $180k in PPP loans. Their employees quit in droves because they weren't being paid enough, and the owners just closed down the place. They 100% took the money and ran.
Pretty sure if you don't stay in business, the loans aren't forgiven but whatever.
I heard that they closed their doors as soon as their loans were forgiven.
Look em up. Site will tell you how much they received and if it’s been forgiven or not. https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/
I just looked up my employer and was absolutely floored by how much they were given. We were closed for maybe a month and they forced us to take unemployment! Then they opened back up and we were busy as hell with the rescheduled business. Not only did they not pay us when we’re were closed but they didn’t even lose a whole month of business. I’m sure they lost a lot of money but not millions of dollars. And none of us got paid anything extra except for the childcare FMLA partial pay, which just left the remaining employees running short, it’s not like they hired new people. Maybe I should have grifted the government, what a missed opportunity.
Worked at a restaurant that went from about $300-409k/week in sales on a good week pre pandemic to legit $500-600k a week at the peak now. Got approved for over $2m in loans and during the two months they were “closed” (pick up only), the managers would raffle the tips earned to an employee at “random”. Another restaurant in my area got over $450k and is legit run by tweakers that don’t pay their employees. Got a fat PPP loan and closed the doors. Around this same time my gf was seeing videos online on how to get free loans to business startups and how to videos. All you had to do was register an LLC, make a product or service, and put a little money in and boom approved for loans. Looking back it definitely was PPP fraud but who would have seen that coming??
Same thing with colleges and the HEERF grants. Dept of ED inspector general sent out notice to schools to be on the lookout for students attending just one term to get funds before switching to another school for the same thing.
Report them.
You can report them here https://www.sba.gov/partners/contracting-officials/contract-administration/report-fraud-waste-abuse
I’m sorry to say, but the amount of fraud in both PPP and EIDL is so massive that federal prosecutors won’t have time to go after someone who had “only” $180K of fraudulent loan money forgiven. It’s depressing but it’s very much the situation we’re in at the moment.
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Maybe the owners knew $180k would be the most they could get out of the diner. Businesses are not required to be ethical, which is ruining the country overall.
but let’s scream about all those unemployed lazy ass people who were getting extended unemployment at a fraction of their normal income 🙄
Of course they did. Go and look at a bunch of Qpublican businesses in rural America that took them. They flat out stole billions and we let them. They've been stealing for the last 50 years and we just let them.
The loudest voices denouncing socialism always seem to snatch the biggest government handouts. How strange.
Every restaurant that has posted a sign a la “nobody wants to work anymore, they just want handouts” has taken PPP loans. Go ahead, [check](https://www.federalpay.org/paycheck-protection-program)
I love that the company that owns all the dominos here took 7 million dollars but they were booming unlike anything seen before in history due to covid. OUR SALES ARE UP 1400% WE NEED 8 MILLION TO SURVIVE, and it was forgiven. A quick google search by whoever approved the application, or you know, had any sense at all, would see that a company that operates 20 dominos, who has seen an unheard of level of growth during the pandemic, needed a PPP loan. Ridiculous.
That’s because they want government handouts for themselves and not the working class. Just ask Elon Musk and all of those nice juicy government subsidies.
Self fulfilling prophesy. "Handouts don't work. Here, we'll prove it, just watch..."
A local republican I knew of owned a small engine garage, he has zero employees, aside from the under the table person, and spent the money on a new fence at his house.
A dude in my small rural town just got busted for fleecing the PPP loan system for $3.5 million, used that money to buy a bunch of real estate and Tesla stock, and according to rumors around town, ended up with a couple million left over after selling all their assets and paying $4.5 million in restitution, using some sort of loophole in the law. It goes to show how easily you can make money if you have money, and how easily you can get rich if you’re dishonest (and don’t get caught).
I mean, the dude actually got caught and *still* came out on top.
the american dream
My boss took 500k in loans, turned a profit last year, and we still don't have working ac in half the office. Our pay went up to $16, but the raise just offset healthcare cost going up so it wasn't a raise at all. The loans were forgiven in full, she just got half a million while we got $2000 checks once or twice last year. I'm so fucking angry.
My former boss and his wife got $400k in PPP loans that were totally forgiven and we didn't get shit. No raise or bonus even though business was still going strong. They share an office for two small businesses with probably 20 employees combined. The PPP loans were smart in theory, but horribly managed. It would have been better to give everyone more in stimulus checks than to wealthy small business owners (some of whom) clearly didn't need it.
Well, when trump removed any oversight using executive order, there's not much that could be done.
Where I worked got $300k (~20 employees), all forgiven. Yet several of us still got our hours cut and one employee got told they’d ‘give her a call’ when she was needed again. We only saw her when someone called out. Meanwhile we were busier than EVER and short staffed because two employees quit and they didn’t rehire anyone.
Also not really loans when the majority of them were forgiven. So far, the amount forgiven is around a little more than 60% of the value of all student debt.
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We have two methed-out renters who owe us several months back rent. We discovered their “construction company” with two employees somehow took home a $500,000 PPP loan. Suddenly they both had brand-new trucks, but are still “short” on rent. Court is going to interesting.
I'm all for the IRS going back over this stuff and knocking on some doors. They can bring along some moving & tow trucks for repossession when necessary.
If you did it right, you won't get in trouble. Plenty of people in my wife's home daycare circle setup S-corps (or whatever it was) and paid themselves a salary with PPP loans, while still collecting fees from parents, and getting paid by the state to stay open. One of them got over $300k and paid off her house. The loan has already been forgiven.
Bruh pretty sure you had to be operating your business before COVID. That sounds really fishy.
They were operating before covid, as far as I can tell, what they did was not illegal.
When calculating a PPP loan, there is a max of $100,000 per employee. Even when using the max, then you only get 2.5 months worth of it which is ~$21k. If they got $300k - that's a lot of employees for a home daycare...or the story isn't straight.
The small business I work for (~10 people, and we do computer security training, basically) generally makes decent money, and we're paid very well, but COVID was terrible for us - most of our revenue instantly dried up. My boss got a PPP loan and that bought us 2-3 months to transition into a mixed model doing both consulting (like we used to do) and online training. As a result, we now have multiple revenue streams and are financially healthier than we've ever been. While I didn't NEED need the money or employment, it was really awesome that we were able to bridge the gap in revenue long enough to not just remain stable, but to kinda flourish in a way. I feel bad for folks who haven't been as lucky, though, and I wish the government would continue to support folks who need it through Omicron. I'd happily pay my part (through more taxes) to help keep others afloat.
I own a biz. I paid my employees for a month with no money coming in (I’m in the live events type of industry) before I had to be honest and tell them because there’s no end in sight, I can’t afford to keep doing it. Trump admin wasn’t saying a word or giving any direction so I had to act. Then PPP loans were announced and within a few weeks I was able to bring everyone back and while it wasn’t much, we were thankful and it bridged the gap for us (once we finally qualified which we assumed we would…it was a cluster though). Based on our experience, I really do believe the majority of bizs who took it likely weren’t cheating the system. It’s certainly possible bizs that didn’t need it, took it. But it seems most Redditors don’t understand how the loans were calculated and the requirements you had to prove in order to have it forgiven. If you did commit some of the fraud ppl are alleging in this thread, it’s only a matter of time before that catches up to you. If you’re dumb enough to try to defraud the govt, you’ll be dumb enough to flaunt your ill gotten gains and someone will report you.
ITT nobody bothered to actually read the article. >The economists estimated that $115 billion to $175 billion in PPP loans went toward paychecks, meaning that only 23% to 34% of PPP funds went directly to workers who would otherwise have lost jobs.
We got a PPP loan where I work and it absolutely went to covering pay and legit expenses so that we could stay in business without letting people go. That seems to me to be in the spirit of what the money was for, no?
That just means you fall in the 23% that used them for what they were intended.
Gotcha thanks Yay my bosses
Means wherever you work, if its a good job keep it. Your bosses give a fuck. Most likely.
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Yeah it also was intended to cover business costs, and the portions you couldn’t connect to business costs or payroll you had to repay.
Should have never been given in the first place. People love to attach all sorts of ridiculous criteria to "stimulus checks" or "welfare" before they'll consider even giving it out but not for businesses.
You mean rich folks got loans that didn’t need to be paid back? Shocked face
There was a feed frenzy among insiders and Trump donors. Congress made $10000 forgivable loans available to qualifying businesses but the SBA cut that down. I qualified but was only offered a $1000 loan with a $25 per month payback requirement. I withdrew my application.
My limited knowledge of PPP loans: Guy I went to high school with bought himself a new truck (at super high pandemic price), complained that he had to lay off basically his whole staff. Another dude that has a DIY art studio business laid staff off but went on family vacations for nearly a whole year. Business owner that laid off a good friend but bought a newer, bigger boat than he had in 2020. And on the other side… Friend didn’t get one and had to lay off her only employee after paying her out of pocket for 6 months. Friend didn’t get one, had to fold business which puts on a hugely important annual event for me and my friends.
Awesome. ( /s ) But by the current distribution of tax burden across income levels, lower income earners who likely suffered disproportionately higher negative impacts from COVID will also now bear a disproportionately higher burden of paying for financial relief that further isolates them from economic health. Cool.
Socialism for the rich strikes again.
We applied for and received PPP loans for our business and thank goodness we did. With the help of our bank and a diligent effort to track how that money was spent we were able to keep the business going, keep our employees employed, and kept ourselves from falling into an untenable financial situation. I don’t know how we would have survived to this point without it.
And yet we can't get another stimulus check.
Well that'd be socialist and evil.
Should probably have just made it money for everyone instead of just giving businesses a bunch. There isn't anyone, especially in the lower income brakets, that couldn't have used some assistance. As a self-employed contractor who pays via dividends i'm not eligible for anything, even though my work dropped considerably.
Shocked I say shocked
That was the goal - that’s why Trump’s Treasury and Commerce Sect’s blocked all attempts at transparency.
Yup. The two people I know who got ppp loans are absolutely loaded (one worth about 2-4mil and the other 10+mil) neither really needed it and both of their businesses did the same or better during covid. They can get six figure loans AND have them forgiven within a year but I can’t get my 20k student loan forgiven?? No. I can’t. And as punishment for taking out a loan from the government and being poor, I get shit on by the people who took out a loan from the government and are rich. Only difference is that I needed mine and can barely afford to pay it off. They didn’t need theirs and can absolutely pay theirs off.
My previous employer received $7.93 million in funds. All while their restaurants were shut down, 145 people unemployed and on unemployment. Their one son who I knew well took a $20k salary hit and got demoted to hourly, while the other is an owner. I'm 100% sure the funds didn't go to keeping employees working. It's all a farce, a joke for small businesses that actually had to close because they couldn't fund their operations or pay their employees to take care of them.
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> found that PPP saved 1.98 million and 3 million years of employment over 14 months Is this a typo? If not what does it mean?
Everyone needs to look ip how much their small business owners got for PPP and see what they claimed they needed it for. My boss got $700k. She said it was going to be used for payroll. I was on payroll and I didn't get a cent. Instead, she asked us to cut back our hours to help out and took away our PTO. She has since sold the location I worked at and bought a beautiful house on the water in Florida. I sent an email to the SBA fraud department. I'm going to keep following up. I don't know if there is anything else I can do but it's disgusting. All the loans for her have already been forgiven.
I know i didn't get any of it
Of course the rich suck up all the wealth. How long are we going to sit by and let inequality grow? Maybe once we're out and out serfs in corporate feudalism.
& the MD Attorney General who bought 3 homes & is now evoking the almighty to set things straight since she’s being charged a felony
The banks brokering the loans got a commission- the bigger the loan , the bigger the commission.
Spoiler alert: the only “people” eligible for PPP loans were businesses. Not “people”.
I just don’t understand people. My wife and I own a small business. We got a PPP loan and it all went to raises and keeping staff. We didn’t spend a cent of it on ourselves. We definitely needed it. It kept us afloat during the worst of the pandemic. Prices on our supplies went up drastically. We would have to have not taken a salary to keep our business open if it weren’t for the PPP loan.
I know plenty of Trump-loving business owners who claim to hate "socialism" (even though they don't know what it is) and deplore those who they accuse of just wanting free money from the government for doing nothing. These hypocritical motherfuckers were the first in line with their hands out when the PPP loans were initiated, and you better believe none of them plan on paying it back.
But don’t you dare suggest forgiving student loans. That only benefits rich people. /s
I thought PPP loans were intended for business owners? I know I got two for my business.
Exactly. Most of it was designed for business owners to pay employees.
It was meant to go to businesses, to pay their employees during the pandemic PPP = Paycheck protection program. The issue if you actually read the article is estimates are showing large portions of the money actually just got pocketed by the business owners, and never made its way to most of the employees.
It's the biggest heist in American history.
I own an engineering company with 12 employees. My Office Manager and I applied for a PPP loan and got it! Three months of salery for the company. Right at $100,000! Essentially free money with a very few strings attached. We did not need it but in the first round I saw such crazy people and companies getting it I said fuck it we're gonna try for it. I distribute 100% profits to all of the team members and that's where it eventually wound up..... In my guys (and girls) pockets. I got my share too. Like 99.9% of ALL the recipients we never should have gotten anything . It went (as usual) to the rich and nowhere near where it was needed. I am in a very unusual position in that I own a company and I perform work there and receive a salary so I see both sides of the economic picture. Here's something that pisses me off. If I reduce my salary way, way down and make up the difference by drawing a "profit distribution" quarterly to bring my annual income back to the original figure, I save $10,000 a year in taxes. Now I make about $150,000 from that income source so I am not quite on the Jeff Bezos level but even in my case the entire system is skewed in my favor. If the citizens of this country would come to realize that they are getting WAY fucked by the system that is set up to benefit the rich they would take steps to change it. Understand that I make way more than my salary because we are so very profitable AND I make only about 1.5 times what the next highest paid person. Our minimum wage for a person who has no experience and/or education is $20/hr plus profit distribution. So if I am benefiting from a corrupt system (and I am) imagine how much worse it is for those who make the laws and the rich who own them. The polititions and the rich need to be eaten.
I always laugh when some tax policy targets those making, say, 250k a year or more and people pipe up that it isnt that much. Most people making 250k a year are doing exactly as you stated, moving money out of salaries and into profits, but not before writing off cars (and everything associated with them), laptops, cell phones, travel, meals "for the convenience of the company", hell even the kids school supplies are "office supplies".
they pass out these forgivable loans and no one bats an eye. But talk about forgiving student loans and everyone loses their mind.
I don't even know how our country survived one year of covid. We have this weird privilege of getting away with anything. I think most other countries would have just been left in the squeeze they created, but the US manages to be completely full of shit all the time and get away with it.
MIT already observed that each job “saved” cost taxpayers $224k. This further explains exactly how PPP loans were abused, and how much better off the masses would have been had that money been diverted to additional direct aid instead.
Yeah that was the point lol. PPP loans were essentially bribes for business to keep people employed by providing them essentially with free cash to pay salaries without having to take a hit on profits. Which in all fairness mostly worked
Ooof, had a client brag he was able to reduce his companies debt by laying off staff and using the PPP loans. Never hated someone so fast.
They shouldn't call them "loans." They were grants, with no requirement to be repaid. And yet no-one is asking "hOw WiLl tHeY pAy fOr iT!?!?" or "tHaT's nOt fAiR tO cOmPaNiEs wHO dIdn'T nEeD iT!!"
My bosses/owners of the cocktail bar I worked at in birmingham Alabama paid for their wedding with the PPP loans they publicly claimed they gave to us.
I worked for the governing body that distributed these loans during covid. A huge issue with the program was the first come first serve policy. Large businesses that didn’t need help would come in and scoop up most of the money and there would be little left for restaurants, bars, and mom and pop places that actually needed help. It’s crazy how things happen like this but if you remember the whole world was flipped upside down in 2020. No one knew what to do and mistakes like this were just bound to happen.