![]() “But some of these got by because of the way the program was established, which was designed to get the money out the door.” “We found doll heads and faces and all of that,” said the lender, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid bad publicity associated with the program. One lender who was tied up in litigation at one point with Womply said the fintech blamed a sub-vendor for approving the doll-face ID photos. The Messenger obtained the images from a source familiar with the investigation. The fraudulent doll-face photos from Womply were given to SBA, which said it was not able to comment on any active or potential investigations. “I don't know if we'll ever know the extent of the fraud enabled by Womply, but many of the companies that worked with Womply said it was significant,” said Nick Schwellenbach, a senior investigator at the watchdog group Project On Government Oversight, who testified before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on the role that fintechs played in PPP fraud. The fintechs claimed their artificial intelligence software would automatically check applicants’ picture IDs uploaded to PPP application portals.īut scores of scammers uploaded the doll faces instead. The doll-face scam, unreported until now, accounted for just a fraction of the estimated $80 billion in fraud that plagued the Paycheck Protection Program and that was the subject of a scathing House committee report accusing financial technology companies of facilitating the taxpayer ripoff.Ĭalled “fintechs,” the companies billed themselves as computer-savvy middlemen who could help get government money from approved lenders into the hands of small businesses struggling after the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020. ![]() ![]() Scammers created fake identities with pictures of doll faces and other figurines to rip off the nation’s largest COVID-19 relief program, according to images of the phony accounts that were given to government investigators and later obtained by The Messenger.
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