My dad and I own a business and at the time we're the only two employees, so we could base our loan only on our salaries, and we got both rounds of loans and had both forgiven. We sent it all to our independent contractors at the time, and then hired them W-2 when we were able to return to work.

Having done the paperwork, there was a lot of the 'honor system' involved, and I saw how we easily could have manipulated numbers or misrepresented things to receive more. It could have been more stringent, for sure.

That said, it kept food on a lot of carpenter's plates.

The fraud should be pursued with aggression. Fuck thieves.