The single-family house on Forestview Avenue in Euclid, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, shows no signs of farming activity. The only things growing on the one-eighth-acre plot are trees, shrubs and grass. But 20 companies registered at that address, with names like Organic Ohio Berries LLC and Garlic Farming LLC, have won government approval for loans and grants intended to support small businesses hurt by the pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. In all, the owner of the Forestview home and his family members created 72 companies with agrarian-sounding names at three Cleveland-area addresses and then used them to get approval for loans and grants totaling $7.2 million from the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, state and federal records show. There’s no sign of agricultural activity at any of the locations, or that any of the companies were active before Feb. 1, a requirement for pandemic aid. None of them was registered with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office before May. A lawyer for Zaur Kalantarli, the owner of the Forestview house, acknowledged in an interview this week that at least some of the loans were questionable and may have to be repaid. The lawyer, Edward La Rue of Cleveland, said that he contacted federal prosecutors in Ohio on Monday and brought the matter to their attention. La Rue said Kalantarli hired him on Nov. 12 after an inquiry from Bloomberg News. The disaster-relief program has distributed 3.6 million loans worth $192 billion to small businesses since March, as well as 5.8 million grants that don’t have to be repaid totaling $20 billion. It’s distinct from the SBA’s $525 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which relied on banks to distribute forgivable loans meant to cover payroll. A $750 million computer program set up by the SBA in April was supposed to flag suspicious disaster-aid applications before they were approved, but last month Bloomberg News quoted current and former SBA workers and outside fraud investigators describing widespread fraud that the computers had failed to catch.
