LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Four years after the pandemic started, the state is still prosecuting people involved in defrauding the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program loans.

Yulonda Eckel, 56, of Ann Arbor, pled guilty Nov. 15 to fraudulently getting two pandemic loans and agreed to pay restitution of $47,660. Eckel lied when she said in 2020 she was a sole proprietor with $104,900 in gross income from her business, according to the Michigan Attorney General’s office.

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Eckel was part of what U.S. federal government investigators believe was about $200 billion in fraud that took place in the pandemic assistance loan programs to businesses. The U.S. Small Business Administration oversaw the loan program, which gave out $1.2 trillion.

The U.S. Department of Labor spent $900 billion on unemployment insurance and estimated about $320.4 billion of it was improper.

Now, a government watchdog agency is stating the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Department of Labor, are not “effectively identifying all overpayments—which can affect their ability to recover these payments.”

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its report Nov. 13.

The GAO stated that as of April 2024, states had recovered $3.7 billion of the $55.2 billion in pandemic-related unemployment benefits.

In addition, the GAO made several recommendations, including improving loan review processes in terms of how they are used to identify overpayments and to create “clear, formalized procedures for tracking all identified overpayments and subsequent recoveries.”