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Herb Miller was baffled when he learned that the Trumpadministration reported that his one-man business in Hixson,Tennessee, was approved for a coronavirus relief loan of as much as$5 million. The amount was $3,700, he said.

"Something is screwed up there," said Miller, who has been anaccountant for almost five decades. "I'm going to have to get thisstraightened out."

A Bloomberg News analysis shows that the datafor Paycheck ProtectionProgram loans totaling more than $521billion released on July 6 are riddled withanomalies.

Although the maximum PPP loan for a one-person enterprise is$20,833, more than 75,000 loans listing one job retained havehigher amounts — including 154 showing $1 million or more.

The PPP was designed to keep employees of small businesses onpayroll during the pandemic. Out of almost 4.9 million loans, thenumber of "jobs retained" is zero for 554,146 and blank for324,122. Seven loans list negative job numbers.

Conversely, almost a thousand entries show 500 jobs for loansunder $150,000, which is mathematically doubtful given that the aidis based on 2.5 times a firm's average monthly payroll.

In 209 of those cases, it implies an average monthly salary of$4 or less per employee. Taken together, those figures call intoquestion the job numbers in one out of every five PPP loans.

The anomalies cast doubts about the accuracy of the data for thecenterpiece of the $2.2 trillion relief package enacted in March,including whether it supported the 51.1 million jobs that theadministration has touted.

Backlash over borrowings

The PPP program is already facing backlash fordoling out millions of dollars to big-name law firms, Wall Streetmanagers and companies with ties to President Donald Trump andother politicians.

Now critics say the data issues make it difficult to evaluatehow well the program worked, especially because the names ofborrowers were redacted for smaller loans thataccount for about 87% of the number of loans.

"We are spending, as American taxpayers, upwards of half atrillion dollars to purportedly help small businesses stay afloat,"said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, agovernment-watchdog group that often criticizes the Trumpadministration. "We should know where the money went, how many jobswere saved, and right now with the data, we don't have that abilityto say with any certainty."

The reported number of jobs is based on information provided byapplicants, according to a spokesperson for the TreasuryDepartment, which runs the PPP with the Small BusinessAdministration.

While some borrowers may have erroneously omitted the jobsnumber, the total value of loans approved is consistent withsupporting about 51 million jobs based on average small-businessemployee compensation, the spokesperson said.

Under the program, borrowers file their applications through anapproved lender. After the SBA issues a loan-guarantee number forbanks to disburse funds, the lender and borrower can agree to alower the amount, the spokesperson said.

The SBA and Treasury didn't explain how some million-dollarloans in the data are much higher than some borrowers said theyapplied for and received.

Banks said the problem with the jobs data is that neither thePPP application nor SBA's electronic system that lenders use tosubmit applications required an input for "jobs retained."

The application had a box for "number of employees," and somelenders said they submitted that number while others said they leftit blank.

Getting the jobs number right will matter even more whenborrowers apply for loan forgiveness: The business ownerswill have to prove they maintained headcount and salaries to gettheir aid turned into a grant. If the SBA determines that aborrower is ineligible, the agency will direct the lender to denyloan forgiveness, the Treasury spokesperson said.

Supporters credit the PPP, created and implemented in a matterof days, for getting funding quickly to millions of U.S. smallfirms that self-certified they needed the funds as businesses wereshuttered. They say such an unprecedented program rolled out soquickly was bound to have glitches.

Mistakes galore

Bloomberg News spoke to more than a dozen companies that,according to the government, received loans of more than $1 millionwith a reported one job retained. The borrowers all said there weremistakes in the dataset.

Frank Demandt, owner of a Miami architectural firm, said he hadfour employees and that the loan value was grossly overstated. Hesaid he received $19,700, not the $1 million to $2 million rangecited in the SBA data. Demandt's lender, BankUnited Inc., confirmedthe loan amount and said it doesn't know why the data sayotherwise.

In Star City, Arkansas, Gregory Smith was dumbfounded. The chiefexecutive officer of C&L Electric Cooperative Corp., whichsupplies power to more than 20,000 customers in a rural part of thestate, said in his application that the company had about 100employees.

"If it shows one job retained, that's way off," Smith said.

Several companies, including scooter-rental service Bird RidesInc., have complained that they appear in thedata even though they didn't apply for or get aid.

"I actually never received a PPP loan," said Bridget Ottoh ofthe Ottoh Group in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, who was listed as havingbeen approved for a loan of $2 million to $5 million. "I appliedfor it and then withdrew it."

The SBA inspector general, who produced a report in May criticalof the agency for not collecting demographic data to prioritizeloans to underserved and rural areas as Congress intended, has areview ongoing about the implementation of PPP and is aware ofpublic reporting about anomalies, spokesman Sheldon Shoemakersaid.

Data analysis is part of the investigations and reviews, hesaid.

Miller, the Tennessee accountant whose loan was reported asbetween $2 million and $5 million in the SBA dataset, said helearned about the error when a friend saw his name in a list of PPPrecipients published on a local newspaper's website andasked why Miller hadn't left town yet. The lender, Millennium Bank,couldn't be reached for comment.

"This whole thing is a farce," Miller said.