Aaron Bean: “I thank the chairman for yielding time. Mr. Speaker, the COVID pandemic is behind us, and with that, a lot of the…”

“I thank the chairman for yielding time. Mr. Speaker, the COVID pandemic is behind us, and with that, a lot of the problems associated with COVID have also managed to go away, but fraud remains. The bill to the American people associated with that COVID relief fraud is here. We have to deal with it. Pandemic relief opened the door to wide-scale fraud. Due to the lack of guardrails within the SBA and the borrowing structure, over $200 billion of pandemic loan programs were potentially fraudulent. Did you catch that, Mr. Speaker? $200 billion. That is not me. That is not Aaron Bean. That is the Inspector General of the United States overseeing the SBA. He has identified more than 90,000 fraud cases, over one in five, which represents more than 100 years of investigative casework. Mr. Speaker, one of the most disturbing stories to come out of the Inspector General's investigation is the Barbie doll face scam. Do you know about this? This scam wasn't perpetrated by America's favorite Barbie such as Malibu Barbie, Presidential Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, or even Live Action Barbie. No, no, no, Mr. Speaker. This was perpetrated--this was the job of swindler Barbie. Swindler Barbie's face was used as identification for fake identities who went on to collect millions in fraudulent loans when facial recognition software used at SBA verified the identities as real people.…”