The Small Business Administration gave out $312 million in COVID loans to children age 11 and younger, including a 9-month-old infant who apparently convinced federal bureaucrats he was ready to take his startup to the next level. DOGE uncovered 5,593 loans — every single one of them filed with a Social Security number that didn’t match the name on the application — because of course they were.
Not one. Not a handful. All 5,593.
Let’s get the obvious question out of the way: who on earth approved a $100,000 business loan for a baby who wasn’t even walking yet? What was the pitch meeting like? Did he drool on the paperwork or just fax it in from his crib?
DOGE announced the findings on March 8th, and the post racked up more than 22 million views almost instantly. Elon Musk reposted it with a raised-eyebrow emoji — which is honestly the most restrained possible reaction to learning that the federal government funded a preschool venture capital portfolio. When Musk highlighted the 9-month-old specifically, he quipped, “That’s a very precocious baby!” Sure is, Elon. Harvard Business School is going to want that kid.
And the children weren’t even the most creative part of this racket.
The SBA also handed out $333 million in loans to 3,095 borrowers who were listed as being over 115 years old. One recipient’s listed age was 157. Methuselah himself couldn’t have pulled this off without a federal grant. The Social Security database had all of these ancient Americans marked as *alive*, which tells you everything you need to know about the quality of the government’s bookkeeping.
President Trump mentioned in his address to Congress that someone in the Social Security database is listed as 360 years old. That would make him older than the country. We don’t even know who to be more impressed by — the fraudster or the bureaucrat who approved it without blinking.
Combined, the baby borrowers and the immortal seniors account for more than $630 million in fraudulent loans. That’s just from the SBA. The Department of Labor, not wanting to be left out, chipped in $382 million in fraudulent unemployment payments to infants, people with birthdates in the future, and individuals listed at 115 years old. Washington really was committed to an all-ages fraud experience.
Here’s the part that should make every taxpaying American’s blood pressure spike: the SBA didn’t require PPP applicants to provide their date of birth. At all. Investigators found that 87 percent of PPP records sampled didn’t include one. The government was handing out pandemic relief money — $1.2 trillion worth — without bothering to check whether the person on the other end of the application was old enough to tie their shoes.
The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee estimated the government could have prevented $79 billion in identity fraud by running basic data analytics before cutting checks. They just… didn’t. Fraud detection systems weren’t fully implemented until after more than $210 billion — roughly 55 percent of COVID loans — had already gone out the door.
Now, who was running the SBA when all of this happened? That would be Isabel Casillas Guzman, Biden’s SBA chief, who has since moved on to a cushy new role at Stanford University and is not returning press calls. Convenient! We’re sure she’s very busy teaching seminars on responsible lending to people who are actually old enough to attend a university.
Current SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler — to her credit — is not hiding from any of this. She told Congress bluntly: “The Biden admin enabled and covered up large-scale fraud, waste, and abuse at the SBA.” She also confirmed that the agency is now — brace yourself — requiring applicants to provide a date of birth and is pausing loan approvals for anyone claiming to be under 18 or over 120 years old.
The SBA is calling these “basic sanity checks.”
Basic. Sanity. Checks. We’ve apparently reached a point in American governance where “don’t give $100,000 to a 9-month-old” qualifies as a policy innovation worth announcing to Congress.
By the end of fiscal year 2024, COVID loan charge-offs had already topped $70 billion — money that is gone forever. The SBA Inspector General’s office has racked up over 1,000 indictments and 529 convictions so far, and investigators say they’re looking at over 100 years’ worth of caseload to work through.
Your tax dollars built the tunnels. Funded the rioters. Paid for celebrity appearances with foreign dictators. And apparently bankrolled the most aggressive infant entrepreneurship program in American history.
The next time someone in Washington lectures us about our “civic duty” to pay our taxes on time, remind them that a 9-month-old just qualified for a six-figure SBA loan and the bureaucrats responsible are now teaching at Stanford.