Placing in this category for broad member view. SBA Covid relief loan fraud notification. UPDATE !!!

catch22

--- What: The COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and EIDL Advance programs provide funding to help small businesses recover from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

--- An official letter has been received stating that: Dear Sir or Madam, We are reaching out to you regarding a loan taken out in your identity with the U.S. Small Business Admin. (SBA). This letter is to inform you that we believe your identity may have been used, without your knowledge or permission, to obtain a COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) for which you never received any of the loan proceeds. The SBA is committed to working with you to resolve this unfortunate situation.

--- All of the phone numbers and contact information in the letter matches the SBA online site correctly. So, the letter itself is not fraudulent. ALSO included is the loan #.

We already have 2 'free' credit watches from data breaches at a hospital and United Healthcare's 'Change Healthcare' data site that provides data for/from numerous hospitals and insurance companies. Geez !!!

Question? Has anyone here had this 'experience' and readily resolved this issue?

Thank you in advance,
Catch

WABAC

A real snail-mail letter?

Might be a real thing.

Old_Joe

@Catch22 - No, nothing like that. If the letter is legit I don't think that they would be asking for any personal or financial info, since they must already have all of that before they sent it to you, and evidently they already know that you are a victim here. In any case since your personal info has been compromised (again!) I would at the very least immediately put a freeze on your credit at the three major credit reporting agencies. We have already done that because of an AT&T personal info hack.

InformalEconomist

No experience, but I did find copies online of a purported letter from SBA concerning EIDL fraudulent claims. SBA also says it will never ask for a credit card number.
So it could be legitimate, and I am sorry if so.

yugo

Before doing anything, you might first consider checking your credit reports from all 3 agencies. (You could get those free here: https://www.annualcreditreport.com)

Hopefully, you will not see anything alarming and the entire incident would turn out to be a nasty hoax.

However,

If there was indeed a personal loan taken out in your name, you would see the details on the report, and would have the relevant information to contact SBA; or

If the loan was taken in your name on a business, you would at least see an SBA inquiry on the report, and again would have something concrete to contact SBA with.

In either case, doing a credit freeze as Old_Joe suggested would seem like a good idea then, until you have a chance to sort things out with SBA.

Finally, it would have been difficult for and, likely, not the goal of anyone to collateralize this loan - assuming it was actually made. If so, I believe the amount would be $14K personal / $25K business at the most, so it is unlikely to be a six or seven figure loan and should be relatively easier to clear up. (I could not find the SBA link for this, so here is one from the lending site.)

Hope this helps.

yogibearbull

During the Covid lockdown, my wife received a letter from an IL Dept saying that an unemployment claim had been filed for her. Considering that she had been "retired" for several years, we found this strange. I called the number provided in the letter but it said to leave a message and somebody will call back.

SEVERAL DAYS later, somebody did call back. We were told that there was an ATTEMPT to file a fraudulent claim that was flagged and that's what prompted the initial letter. But they won't provide any other details - who filed, from what job, etc. We were told NOT to worry, except to watch for any unusual credit report activities. STRANGELY, we were also told that the IL system would keep generating some related follow up letter(s) that couldn't be cancelled, but to just ignore it. Thankfully, nothing unusual showed up on her credit reports.

We subscribe to free Credit Karma, as well as some additional free monitoring provided because of some other breaches in the news.

What concerns me in the OP is that the SBA loan was processed and proceeds sent so someone not @catch22.

briboe69

It's legit, I'm a CPA, and the SBA sent out a lot of these letters last week. Follow the instructions on the letter under Report Identity Theft to SBA by providing the three sets of documentation to them via mail, fax, or portal. Most likely you have nothing to worry about in terms of them using your identity for anything else, the thieves generally targeted only the SBA EIDL loans.

catch22

Thank you to everyone for their input, and especially @briboe69 to verify what we thought we needed to do.
We have started the process, as per the paperwork received. I will update this thread as everything progresses in the future.

One last 'complaint' about our wonderful world of all things online. We've had a 'home' online presence since 1997; and have fully enjoyed the experience. My 'work' career had me involved with technology for more than 40 years; and many more years of keeping 'up' with everything involved with technology at home.
While I understand the ongoing attacks and system breaches of data centers of all sorts; I keep my fingers crossed that all organizations are spending the money needed to hire the folks they need to attempt to stay ahead of the hackers.
We keep all of our home systems up to date and use VPN for online; and anti virus programs. The only periodic downside for VPN is that it has to be disabled for access to some online accounts. A small bother to deal with for some protection.

sma3

I have lost al hope that most organizations can keep up with hackers. The only hacks we probably hear about seem to be health care institutions that are probably legally mandated to report.

Can you imagine the downside to Schwab's stock price if it admitted a multi-billion dollar hack?


Like Old Joe we have had credit freezes on all our accounts for years. Not fool proof but I think it helps

msf

I have lost al hope that most organizations can keep up with hackers. The only hacks we probably hear about seem to be health care institutions that are probably legally mandated to report.

Unless one lives in California ...

California law requires a business or state agency to notify any California resident whose unencrypted personal information, as defined, was acquired, or reasonably believed to have been acquired, by an unauthorized person. (California Civil Code s. 1798.29(a) [agency] and California Civ. Code s. 1798.82(a) [person or business].)

https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/databreach/reporting

catch22

UPDATE: The following information was recently received from the SBA on June 17:

We received your identity theft complaint. After a thorough review of the loan record and the
information you have provided, we have confirmed that you did not apply for this loan nor receive
any benefit from this fraudulent loan application.
As a result of this determination, we are taking action to disassociate this loan from your identity
(or that of your business) and will cease all notices, statements, or other correspondence regarding
this loan. SBA will not take any action to collect this loan from you or your business. It may take
up to 30 (thirty) days for this update to take effect in our system. Please contact us should you
receive any notices, statements or other correspondence from us more than 30 days after the date
of this letter.

I/we must add that the SBA performed in a very professional manner. I/we SALUTE their efficient processing of this fraudulent claim.
Once processing began, we were notified that the original fraudulent claim was in the amount of $13,300. No charges were ever placed against any accounts we have.