Small Business Administration

The Small Business Administration has suspended 111,620 California PPP and EIDL borrowers over roughly $8.6 billion in suspected pandemic loan fraud — a figure Administrator Kelly Loeffler said amounted to “at least $9 billion” and framed as evidence of “corruption that the Biden Administration tolerated for years,” an escalation after a Minnesota sweep that suspended about 6,900 borrowers over roughly $400 million. California officials pushed back: Attorney General Rob Bonta called the suspensions “baseless” and noted the state recovered $2.7 billion over a decade, while Governor Newsom’s office mocked the move and highlighted nearly 1,000 arrests and $125 billion in fraud stopped under his tenure.