Series: The Pandemic Economy Fiscal Responses to COVID-19 Financial technology firms at the front lines of approving loans through the Paycheck Protection Program — intended to help small businesses survive during the pandemic — lacked fraud controls, chased high fees to the detriment of some borrowers and sometimes exploited their business relationships to arrange suspect loans for the companies’ own executives.“Even as these companies failed in their administration of the program, they nonetheless accrued massive profits from program administration fees, much of which was pocketed by the companies’ owners and executives,” said Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the subcommittee’s chairman, in a statement released with the new report.The investigation kicked off shortly after ProPublica reported that one fintech, Kabbage, approved hundreds of loans for fake farms, including what claimed to be a potato farm in Palm Beach, Florida, an orange grove in Minnesota and a cattle farm on a sandbar in New Jersey.“Kabbage’s existing online lending platform was able to process the sudden flood of loan applications, in a timely manner, in the midst of a national crisis and in light of ever-changing federal lending rules,” it said.The companies lured customers with promises of quick approval of PPP loans, and once would-be borrowers were approved, they were locked in: Federal rules prohibited them from applying for a PPP loan elsewhere."