{"id":50818,"date":"2021-10-05T23:50:54","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T03:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=50818"},"modified":"2021-10-05T23:50:59","modified_gmt":"2021-10-06T03:50:59","slug":"fake-farms-in-lehigh-acres-received-thousands-of-dollars-in-ppp-loans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2021\/10\/fake-farms-in-lehigh-acres-received-thousands-of-dollars-in-ppp-loans\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake farms in Lehigh Acres received thousands of dollars in PPP loans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Among the millions of businesses that received PPP loans during the COVID-19 pandemic were small farms in Southwest Florida.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"534\" src=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/SBA-PPP.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-50819\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/SBA-PPP.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/SBA-PPP-300x156.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/SBA-PPP-768x401.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The problem is some of the farms don\u2019t actually exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A wheat farm in Lehigh Acres received a loan of more than $20,000, but there\u2019s no farm at the listed address. It\u2019s a one-story home out in the country.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s bizarre,\u201d FGCU finance professor Tom Smythe said of our findings. \u201cYou don\u2019t grow wheat in Lehigh Acres.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/wheat-farm-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-50820\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/wheat-farm-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/wheat-farm-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/wheat-farm-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/wheat-farm-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/wheat-farm-2048x1366.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>NON-EXISTENT FARMS LISTED IN PPP LOAN DATA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bizarre trend was originally discovered by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/ppp-farms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ProPublica<\/a>, a nonprofit newsroom that found hundreds of fake farms had received pandemic loans across the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among the millions of businesses that received PPP loans during the COVID-19 pandemic were small farms in Southwest Florida.&nbsp; The problem is some of the farms don\u2019t actually exist. A&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":50819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[757],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50821,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50818\/revisions\/50821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}