Phantom companies in the United States received more than a billion dollars from the government to fight the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier, the US authorities had developed a federal program allocating generous sums of money to support small businesses during the pandemic. Interestingly, the number of small firms that were given the main grunt of $10,000 turned out to be higher than the government expected. The thing was that business owners began to revive their long-closed companies in order to get financial support from the state. Thus, 81,000 grants were approved in Chicago, while initially there were only 19,000 eligible recipients. Meanwhile, in Illinois the number of grants (24,000) exceeded the number of small businesses (2,000). The situation is similar all over the country. As a result, the US authorities gave over $1.3 billion to phantom companies. Scammers submitted phony appeals providing personal ID and bank account information of Americans they obtained in exchange for a fee. The Small Business Administration said in a statement that its anti-fraud watchdog had already prevented the processing of thousands of invalid applications. The agency started to approve grants in April. In total, the US authorities are to distribute some $20 billion among small businesses.
