While these detected fraud cases make up a relatively small fraction of the total 5.2 million PPP loans awarded, “how widespread and common were fraud and abuse in the PPP program?” asked the study’s authors.
The paper also reveals that advisors receiving abnormally large PPP loans were three times more likely to disclose past civil or criminal misconduct, almost twice as likely to disclose past regulatory infractions, and eight times more likely to have committed fraud in the past.
Additionally, those who took abnormally large loans were significantly more likely to pay client referral fees to a third party and take interest in client transactions. This, the authors said, “suggests that they operate with conflicts of interest which could jeopardize their fiduciary duties to clients.”