Politics | IG says state employees made up businesses,…

Illinois state employees fabricated hair salons, paid others to inaccurately fill out forms and drastically inflated income numbers for their side businesses in an effort to fraudulently receive pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program loans, according to recently released reports from the Office of Executive Inspector General.

One Department of Human Services employee said on a PPP application that his car-washing business made $110,000 in a year but later acknowledged the venture had no customers or income, according to one report. Asked why he listed that amount, the report says he told investigators: “I just randomly put it in to see what I could get; I wanted to try my business again and wanted to go mobile with it.”

Another DHS employee who claimed to have six-figure income from a beauty salon business later told investigators she had only ever made $20 to $40 per month doing hair for friends and family and did not consider it a business.

The woman told investigators she “did what everyone else was doing at the time in order to get money,” the IG reports said. “She said that she did not use loan proceeds for any kind of business expenses because she does not have any business expenses.”

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