US Senator Joni Ernst is shining some light on a big mistake made by one government entity.

When the President Joe Biden’s Small Business Administration started paying grants from COVID relief funds, there were many who decided to take advantage of that. Ernst says investigations show that roughly 4.5 million scammers were awarded $200 billion in grants.

“We have seen career criminals that are really taking hard earned taxpayer dollars. They are fraudulently taking out loans or getting grants through these various programs at the SBA. And what the SBA has basically said, ‘Well, we really don’t want to go back and try and recover those dollars.’”

Ernst says that that is unacceptable, and that she will be requiring the SBA to get the money given to the scammers back. She also shares how creative the scammers got to secure the loans and grants.

“So it seems pretty extraordinary, but yeah. When people were applying for loans or grants online, some of them actually used pictures of, get this, Barbie. The doll. They uploaded a picture of Barbie doll, and they accepted that at the SBA.”

With many of these fraudulent applications being approved, and the scammers sent money, there were many qualified and deserving businesses that were turned away after the money quickly ran out.