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$10.1 billion paid wrong or unproven: Venue grants: 69% paid wrong or without proof
SBA's Shuttered Venue Operators Grants show $14.6B in payments. In fiscal 2025, SBA counted $5.83B as improper and $4.24B it couldn't verify — 68.9% of the money, the highest rate of any program that reported.
What happened
The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant was SBA's pandemic relief program for live-event venues, theaters and museums.
When SBA measured the program for its fiscal 2025 payment-integrity report, it found $5.83B in improper payments and $4.24B it couldn't prove right or wrong — together 68.9% of $14.6B.
Why nobody caught it
- The money went out during the pandemic. The error rate was measured years later, after it was spent.
- SBA was one of the agencies out of compliance with the federal payment-integrity law in fiscal 2024.
How sure are we?
Officially counted as paid in error or without the records to prove it was right. Some is fraud. Nobody has measured how much.
SBA's own estimate, reported to OMB in the official FY2025 dataset. Improper payments include errors and missing paperwork, not only fraud.
Sources
- FY2025 improper payments dataset: every program's results, root causes, recoveries and compliance (FY2004–FY2025)PaymentAccuracy.gov (OMB and CFO Council); totals summed by FraudBad · Nov 9, 2026
- Agencies & programs: improper payment rates, FY2025PaymentAccuracy.gov · accessed Nov 9, 2026
- GAO reports improper payments rose to an estimated $186 billion in fiscal year 2025U.S. Government Accountability Office · Apr 27, 2026
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