Rapper is pleading ignorance

Source: Crazy Days and Nights

The former A+ list rapper is pleading ignorance/surprise at the revelation that all the employees he listed on his PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) application don’t actually exist.

Kanye West

Yeezy

Justice Department announces fraud charges in small-business aid program

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said on Thursday that it had charged 57 people with trying to steal more than $175 million from the Paycheck Protection Program to help small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic as questions swirled about how its funds were disbursed.

Some cases involved “individuals or small groups, acting on their own, who lied about having legitimate businesses or who claimed that they needed P.P.P. money for things like paying workers or paying bills, but instead used it to buy splashy luxury items for themselves,” Brian C. Rabbitt, the acting head of the department’s criminal division, said at a news conference.

In other cases, coordinated criminal rings stole large sums of money from the loan program, Mr. Rabbitt said. “We will be focusing on these types of cases going forward,” he said.

The federal government offered emergency loans to small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act enacted in March to stave off a wave of catastrophic job losses as the pandemic took hold in the United States and businesses were forced to close. The loans could be forgiven if the funds were used to cover payroll and certain other expenses.

Mr. Rabbitt said that the 57 cases charged by the criminal division ranged from loan requests for $30,000 to about $24 million, and that cases had been brought across the United States. Federal prosecutors had also brought separate fraud cases related to the coronavirus relief programs, he said, but he did not mention how many.

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Some large, publicly traded companies took the loans, as did contentious borrowers like small financial firms that manage money for the country’s riches families; Washington lobbying firms; Kanye West’s company, Yeezy; and President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Marc E. Kasowitz. While their loans were not fraudulent, lawmakers and small-business advocates argued that the money had been diverted from businesses in need to enrich wealthy people and companies. – Source