Federal Reports

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) is issuing this Evaluation report to notify Small Business Administration (SBA) officials of significant matters regarding its handling of complaints of identity theft in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.We recommend the Administrator to direct the Associate Administrator for the Office of Disaster Assistance, the Chief Financial Officer for the Office of Performance Management and Chief Financial Officer, and the Associate Administrator for the Office of Capital Access to:1. Develop a process to maintain and track all identity theft complaints.2. Develop a process to provide status updates to each complainant alleging identity theft.3. Complete and formalize a process to restore identity theft victims to their condition prior to the fraud. The process should include steps to stop the loan billing statements, prevent delinquency collections, release them from loan liability and UCC liens.4. Develop a process to remove any fraudulent loans and related UCC filing fees from its financial records.5. Review over 150,000 returned billing statements and resolve any that involve identity theft, then refer fraudulent loans to OIG.While management stated they partially agreed with all of the recommendations, management’s formal comments state they took actions to address each of them.

The EPA should conduct new RTRs for chloroprene- and ethylene oxide-emitting source categories to address elevated individual lifetime cancer risks impacting over 464,000 people, as found in a modeling tool, and to achieve environmental justice.

The OIG investigated allegations that a Bureau of Indian Education employee improperly used school funds to update classrooms. We also investigated allegations that the employee personally benefitted from the renovation projects by improperly influencing the award of a Federal contract to their spouse to perform the interior design work for the projects.We did not substantiate the allegations that the employee used their position in an improper manner or that the employee or the employee’s spouse personally benefitted from any of the classroom renovation work that was completed. We confirmed that the school did not award any Federal contracts for the renovation projects. We also found no evidence the renovation projects violated school policies or Federal regulations.