Exclusive: Inside SBA’s Crack Down on Loan Fraud Nationwide | Administrator Kelly Loeffler
American Thought Leaders
The Epoch Times
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
The Small Business Administration (SBA) recently suspended nearly 7,000 Minnesota borrowers for suspected fraud in pandemic-era small business loans totaling nearly $400 million.
“We worked through the holidays, from Thanksgiving up to New Year’s on about 20,000 different files, found about 8,000 instances of fraudulent loans, and moved quickly to make sure that those borrowers … could never access the services of the SBA again,” said SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler.
They’ll now be taking the same model to investigate other states for COVID-era abuse of the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
In this episode, I sat down with Loeffler to understand her work targeting fraud nationwide, bolstering domestic manufacturing, cutting regulations, and ending politically motivated debanking.
Loeffler grew up on a family farm in Illinois, was the first in her family to graduate from college, and later became a successful businesswoman in finance and FinTech before becoming a U.S. senator and now head of the SBA.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What we did was look at what was happening in Minnesota. |
| 0:03.0 | We worked through the holidays, from Thanksgiving up to New Year's, on about 20,000 different files, |
| 0:10.0 | found about 8,000 instances of fraudulent loans. |
| 0:15.0 | In this episode, I'm sitting down with Kelly Leffler, head of the Small Business Administration, SBA. |
| 0:24.4 | I wanted to understand how exactly she's cracking down on fraud and bolstering domestic manufacturing. |
| 0:27.3 | And when I talk to small businesses, particularly manufacturing, |
| 0:30.9 | their number one concern is a skilled workforce. |
| 0:33.7 | So as far as their concern, the sky is the limit. |
| 0:36.3 | We can build it, but we need the workers to do it. |
| 0:39.1 | Small business is the beating heart of America. |
| 0:42.3 | What can small businesses expect from the SBA in 2026? |
| 0:46.8 | This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Yek Keller. |
| 0:51.9 | SBA administrator, Kelly Leffler, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. |
| 0:56.4 | Yeah, and it's an honor to be with you. Thank you. |
| 0:58.8 | So let's start with the thing that seems to be in the news all the time. There were over 6,000, |
| 1:04.3 | almost 7,000 borrowers that have been suspended in Minnesota. As you're saying, it's about |
| 1:10.1 | $400 million worth of fraudulent loans. |
| 1:14.2 | That seems like a hard move or a strong move to a lot of people. |
| 1:18.9 | What happened exactly? |
| 1:20.1 | Well, when I came in from day one, about a year ago, I said it was a new day at the SBA. |
| 1:26.3 | And why is that? Because first of all, during the |
| 1:29.3 | Biden administration, they had never cracked down on fraud. And what is fraud? It's crime. So what we did |
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