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TreeMac12 OP t1_j5ueigv wrote

A Google search of the alleged ringleader reveals a PPP loan.

https://www.sba.com/ppp-funded-companies/pennsylvania/angel-mason-4862011

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ONE_GUY_ONE_JAR t1_j5vo05v wrote

PPP was all grift and poorly administered. Tons of shit like this happened and no one talks about it. Everyone got mad at checks for people but no one cares that billions in PPP went to scammers.

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Hashslingingslashar t1_j5wdvlh wrote

I fucking wish I did PPP scam lol (not really because I’m a good person but still). The government isn’t going after anyone who stole less than like $25k because it’s less than the cost it would take to get that money back. Hundreds of thousands if not over a million people are going to get away with it.

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Sage2050 t1_j5xu8gl wrote

My neighbor got a new car and renovated his fucking house and I'm over here not stealing from the government like an idiot

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f0rf0r t1_j5zd5bq wrote

i mean we gave the airlines tens of billions of dollars and the govt isn't going to go after them either lol

it was literally the biggest fraud buffet in history

we missed a huge opportunity

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mustang__1 t1_j5vub56 wrote

not all grift - some business did use it and did need it to maintain staffing levels without doing furloughs or layoffs, keeping the burden away from the swamped unemployment system. that said... yeah, poorly administered.

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ONE_GUY_ONE_JAR t1_j5vukm0 wrote

I'm being hyperbolic when I say "all grift" because some did flow to needy businesses. But the vast majority was grift, and that's what I have a problem with.

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hazeleyedwolff t1_j5x39ez wrote

And absolutely none of those tax dollars should have gone to churches, but millions did.

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sttaffy t1_j5ygmux wrote

My dad and I own a business and at the time we're the only two employees, so we could base our loan only on our salaries, and we got both rounds of loans and had both forgiven. We sent it all to our independent contractors at the time, and then hired them W-2 when we were able to return to work.

Having done the paperwork, there was a lot of the 'honor system' involved, and I saw how we easily could have manipulated numbers or misrepresented things to receive more. It could have been more stringent, for sure.

That said, it kept food on a lot of carpenter's plates.

The fraud should be pursued with aggression. Fuck thieves.

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ScoutG t1_j5wtw85 wrote

I don’t think the government cares because so much of that money went right back into the economy. It might not be fair, but it wasn’t about fairness toward individual people; it was about keeping the overall system going and keeping companies in business.

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erdtirdmans t1_j5w4p6l wrote

A government program exploited by scammers!? 😱 Say it ain't so!

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GreenAnder t1_j5ysoos wrote

Unfortunately this is a common administrative compromise. You can have slightly more lax administration, in which case you spend less on admin costs and can be sure people who need it got it. You can also have more strict administration, which costs more and will almost certainly create a barrier to people who actually need the money.

At the end of the day you need to ask yourself if it's more important that everyone who needs it gets it or that no one abuses the system.

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ONE_GUY_ONE_JAR t1_j5zhdkn wrote

I understand that no system is going to be perfect, but PPP was such a fucking shitshow. I touch on it often professionally and the amount of grift that happened is unconscionable.

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Sage2050 t1_j5zk3cu wrote

This isn't an argument about means testing, you're muddying the water by framing it as such

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EnemyOfEloquence t1_j5vrnfs wrote

Well then government shouldn't have forcibly shut down businesses. A lot of people were legitimately not allowed to work, and it was made to keep people employed.

It needed more oversight tho. If you want to audit something, the IRS should be looking into and making sure these were real companies.

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shapu t1_j5vsqjj wrote

The problem isn't that PPP was created to keep people employed, or to keep idle employees paid. The problem is that PPP loans were made with little oversight, often to people who lied, and funds were not equitably or accurately distributed to the workers who were struggling.

It was a clumsy program that should never have existed. A much better solution would simply have been to distribute one month's worth of pay to everyone who reported income in the previous month, plus one month of earnings to everyone* with a schedule C, up to a cap.

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ONE_GUY_ONE_JAR t1_j5vsh9u wrote

Most of the money went to solvent businesses and scammers. If the money went to places shutdown by the pandemic I wouldn't be upset. Small businesses that shutdown for years got a pittance along with ordinary people, while other businesses that were not affected by the pandemic got huge windfalls.

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glitzychevy t1_j5v7lrz wrote

Is there a possibility it’s a different Angel mason?

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[deleted] t1_j5v9ia9 wrote

[removed]

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glitzychevy t1_j5v9s1j wrote

Ahh then highly unlikely lol

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TreeMac12 OP t1_j5vasp1 wrote

Poplar Street looks like it right on the border of the zip codes, but the business address could be not where she resides.

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chewsterrr t1_j5w2ekx wrote

I'm not surprised about sketchy daycare centers in the city. My neighbor's deceased mom previously owned a non-profit daycare, and now his drug/heroin addict son runs the place. On top of that, the house mortgage has not been paid since her passing at the very beginning of the pandemic.

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phillybreezus t1_j5x5iwj wrote

Most likely the day care doesn’t exist. Paper business spun up to get loans. Extremely common for COVID financial programs.

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phillybreezus t1_j5x5dqa wrote

The guy I bought…ummm things from….said that he knew like four people who stopped pushing drugs and were helping people set up “businesses” to get EIDL and PPP loans. These were kids in north Philly. Obvious fraud. Rubber stamped.

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