A government investigation has uncovered that thousands of pandemic relief loans were granted to borrowers too young to legally own businesses. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reported that 5,593 loans, totaling $312 million, were issued to applicants under the age of 12 during the COVID-19 relief period in 2020 and 2021.
Officials revealed that all of these loans were approved using Social Security numbers that did not match the listed applicants’ names, raising serious concerns about fraud and identity theft. DOGE officials noted that while minors can be involved in certain business arrangements, the circumstances of these cases strongly indicate fraudulent activity.
Further investigation also found that the Small Business Administration (SBA) approved an additional $333 million in loans for 3,095 individuals who were supposedly 115 years or older. One applicant, recorded as 157 years old, received $36,000 in federal relief funds. These individuals were still marked as living in Social Security records, despite the impossibility of their ages.
President Donald Trump addressed these issues during a speech to Congress, highlighting the failures in government oversight that allowed millions of dollars to be funneled to ineligible recipients. He pointed to official records listing millions of people over the age of 120 and vowed to stop the reckless mismanagement of taxpayer funds.
DOGE, led by Elon Musk, has been aggressively reviewing federal spending and eliminating waste. In a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, Musk and his team discussed efforts to identify up to $1 trillion in unnecessary government expenditures.
In addition to identifying fraudulent loans, DOGE announced it had canceled a $10.3 million Department of Agriculture contract that had been awarded to a firm tasked with identifying redundant government contracts.
