Slick Rick Jackson’s Billion Dollar Empire Took PPP Loans, Ripping Off Taxpayers and Small Businesses

Slick Rick Jackson's Billion Dollar Empire Took PPP Loans, Ripping Off Taxpayers and Small Businesses

Jackson's companies potentially committed the exact fraud that JD Vance has been cracking down on

New reporting from The Daily Beast exposes billionaire Rick Jackson's health care empire for receiving "millions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program loans during the pandemic" meant for small businesses.

Jackson's $1 billion health care empire ended up with "$2.6 million worth of loans meant for struggling small businesses." The story details how five entities directly tied and controlled by Jackson Healthcare improperly received millions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program loans during the pandemic. The five entities should have been counted together with their parent company, Jackson Healthcare, which would have made them too big to qualify for the program.

It's just the latest example of how Rick Jackson games the system - at Georgians' expense. In the past few weeks alone, new reporting has revealed that a Jackson foreclosure company literally tried to kick one couple out of their homes. Reporting has also exposed that Jackson had to settle a lawsuit for allegedly trafficking and failing to pay nurses.

Read more about Jackson ripped off Georgians:

The Daily Beast: Must-Win MAGA Candidate Caught in Vance's Fraud Crosshairs

• JD Vance spent this week on the campaign trail talking up his latest anti-fraud mission, which even comes with a suitably Trumpian name: Operation No Doze.
• The initiative is aimed at cracking down on people the administration suspects ripped off taxpayers by taking pandemic-era loans they may not have been eligible for.

• "We had many, many people who took advantage of those programs," the vice president told voters in Texas.
• Which brings us to an awkward question for one of the GOP's own candidates.
• MAGA billionaire Rick Jackson is vying to be the next governor of Georgia against former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and has made his business record a central part of his campaign.
• "I'll be just like Trump but with a southern tone," the 63-year-old health executive said earlier this year.

• But as the race hits the final stretch, documents obtained by The Swamp's Farrah Tomazin show that five entities tied to Jackson's health care empire received millions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program loans during the pandemic: the very loans that "Operation No Doze" is targeting.

• So how did companies tied to a billion-dollar health empire end up getting money from a program designed to help small businesses during COVID?

• Insiders say that under PPP rules, the companies that applied for the loans, entities of Premier Anesthesia (of which Jackson was previously president) should have been counted together with their parent company, Jackson Healthcare (of which he was CEO). But Jackson Healthcare is hardly a "small business." Indeed, in 2020 when COVID hit, it had more than 1,500 employees and $1 billion in revenue, while Premier's entities were operating under loan classifications with much lower staff and revenue limits.
• That in itself does not itself establish that anyone deliberately fudged the application, let alone committed fraud, but the optics aren't exactly great for a billionaire candidate whose corporate record has already come under growing scrutiny.

• Last week, for instance, the Swamp revealed how one of Jackson's other companies spent years trying to take a couple's home in a legal battle so brutal that court filings describe a cascade of devastating health problems for both spouses-and ultimately their deaths.

• Earlier, we also reported that some of Jackson Healthcare's other subsidiaries paid $5 million to settle claims that they exploited workers and breached labor laws.

• The Swamp has reached out to Jackson's campaign in relation to $2.6 million worth of loans meant for struggling small businesses.

• Meanwhile, somewhere on the campaign trail, Vance is busy promoting Operation No Doze.

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