♪ this is "nightline." >> byron: tonight, missing billions. how money that was supposed to go to save small business during the pandemic -- >> he said this was a ppp loan. i said, what's that? >> byron: really got spent. thousands accused of fraud. we dive deep to follow the money. >> you can't tell me that you didn't know that you couldn't buy a lamborghini or a luxury

yacht. >> byron: part of the most fraud-ridden government relief program in u.s. history. we meet a former rapper who went to prison for fraud. >> you didn't have a thought, this is too good to be true? >> no, in the music business we make money like this all the time. >> byron: plus uvalde strong. finding hope in the face of tragedy one yard at a time. >> i think we wanted everybody to come together and take their mind off of everything a little bit. >> byron: how the team decided to honor the 21 victims, the number etched in so many hearts. >> the number 21, you'll always carry that in your heart? >> yes, sir, forever. it will always be something part of this community and me. mucinex nightshift fights your worst night-time symptoms, so you can get to sleep and wake up ready to go. how could you? ( ♪ ) wake up to a new you. with mucinex nightshift, it's not cold & flu season, it's always comeback season. how do i do it all? with a little help.

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you should feel that, like, right back here. oh, yeah, i felt that! good, that is so much better than last week. thanks, i've been doing 'em every night while i'm watching tv. - oh, what are you watching? it's a mystery. high quality care that meets you where you are. ♪ >> byron: good evening. thank you for joining us. tonight, the ongoing hunt for billions in missing taxpayer dollars meant to keep the economy alive during the dark days of the pandemic. those funds distributed through federal loan programs. but not everyone who applied had good intentions. here's abc's erielle reshef. >> i'm not an insider. i have a certain set of skills. i know how to research, i know how to draft lawsuits. >> reporter: the coast of oregon might not seem like a hot spot for fighting fraud.

but for brian questenberry, it's the perfect place to do that. >> some people enjoy golfing, fishing. i enjoy finding these fraudsters. i get a sense of satisfaction. it's figuring out a puzzle, a mystery, solving it. >> reporter: his targets, covid relief fraudsters. people and businesses that allegedly knowingly violated the $800 billion paycheck protection program meant to allow struggling businesses to keep paying employees during the pandemic. >> i'm looking for low-hanging fruit. something that's straightforward. double-dipping, for example. i found some who would get two loans in the first round, two loans in the second round, you can't do that. >> reporter: questenberry scouring public data looking for loan applicants he believes broke the rules. >> that bothers me. that's my tax money, your tax money. >> reporter: if the government takes on one of his cases and succeeds in clawing back money,

a percentage goes to questionsenberry. ppp, paycheck protection program, was one part of a $2.2 trillion bill called the c.a.r.e.s. act, signed by president trump in 2020 in response to the covid pandemic. >> last month i asked congress to pass the paycheck protection program, giving small businesses emergency economic relief to keep workers on the payroll. >> it was intended to be a program to give people money that they needed in desperate times. the emphasis at that time was ensuring that businesses were able to operate. >> reporter: brit biles, former white house counsel, supervised the regulations and guidance surrounding ppp and helped design the review and forgiveness program. she spoke to us exclusively. >> it was set up on a self-certification process by the borrowers. it was based on good-faith certifications that they needed

the money, and that they were eligible. >> reporter: the need for speed saw the small business administration execute over 14 years' worth of lending in 14 days. so you could apply, and essentially your word was taken at face value? >> correct. >> reporter: did that stoke alarm for you? >> absolutely. their sole focus was speed. all i was asking for was to ask the right follow-up questions. >> reporter: how were your concerns received? >> let's just say that it rained at the party. >> reporter: mike wares is the inspector general of the small business administration, the person responsible for oversight of all the sba's programs, including hunting down fraud in the ppp. >> fraud is willfully putting down on the paper that you had 200 employees, when you didn't even have a business. fraud is saying that you have a farm, but your farm is in downtown manhattan. >> reporter: social media soon became host to videos explaining how to take advantage of the

various loan programs. as the need for expediency lessened and the scope of fraud came into value, some guardrails were put into place. but wares says much of the damage was already done. >> these are not victimless crimes. the thousands and thousands of small businesses that did not get timely assistance, and you had people dried up in the first tranche when ineligible and fraudulent people were obtaining this money that could have gone to the real small businesses that were hurting. >> reporter: zero sum game? some fraudster took advantage, the average person paid the price? >> that's it. >> reporter: the vast majority of the loans were forgiven by the government if the loan applicant used at least 60% of the money for payroll. a few years later, now federal investigators say ppp, along with its counterpart, economic injury disaster loans, make up the most fraud-ridden government relief program in u.s. horrible. potentially $200 billion obtained fraudulently.

>> these rules were designed to assist in payroll. to keep people employed. you can't tell me that you didn't know you couldn't buy a bentley or a lamborghini or a luxury yacht. >> reporter: feds say fraudsters used ppp funds to buy multimillion-dollar homes, luxury sports cars, yachts, even a private jet. and when the fbi came knocking, one woman hid a duffel bag of cash approximately $400,000 in the bushes behind her house. to date, the inspector general's oversight of the ppp and covid-19 idle programs has brought 1180 indictments, 936 arrests, and 613 convictions. how much did you actually make off these ppp loans? >> it was substantial. >> reporter: in an abc news exclusive, we sat down with someone who was criminally charged with exploiting ppp

funds. diamond blue smith made a name for himself in the early 2000s as part of the r&b group pretty ricky. >> i went from famous to infamous overnight, in the snap of a finger. >> reporter: smith says the covid-19 pandemic hit him hard when it forced his group's reunion tour to shut down. >> it was devastating, i think for everybody. >> reporter: a lot of mouths to feed? >> a lot of mouths to feed, for sure. >> reporter: smith says he was looking for ways to keep making money during the lockdown when he says someone he knew and trusted toltd told him he could help him get a loan. >> so he's calling me, "yeah, man, open up your phone, click right there, yeah, click it, that's it, man, that's it." i ain't read nothing or nothing. >> reporter: he said, fill out these forms and you filled out the forms? >> i didn't fill them out, they filled them out. i clicked a button, and that got me in prison. >> reporter: how much

>> $420,000. >> reporter: you didn't have the thought too, good to be true? >> no, in the music business we make that kind of money all the time. >> reporter: he paid a commission of $200,000 to secure the loan. >> i didn't think nothing of it. i thought, let me give him his percentage so i have done good business. >> reporter: prosecutors say smith falsely applied for a second loan in his mother's fame and received an additional $700,000. then he says he spoke to his accountant. >> he said, "this was a ppp loan." i said, "what's that?" "this is a government ppp loan." >> reporter: prosecutors say smith was part of a south florida ring that applied for a total of $35 million in ppp loans. where did the money go? >> in the accounts. >> reporter: from your account, what did you spend it on? >> i did some charity stuff, gave out money to friends and family. like santa claus. >> reporter: the prosecutors in this case said that you had deliberate ignorance of truth, meaning that you just didn't want to know the facts?

>> that's how they painted it. me telling you i didn't know, it's hard to believe. >> reporter: prosecutors said, instead of employee payroll, smith spent money on purchases like a ferrari, shopping at versace, and over $27,000 at the seminole hard rock casino near miami. you don't apologize for the lifestyle because this is something that you've been leading for a long time now? >> that's in my business. a luxury car is what is in the business. clothing is in the business. hair, makeup, style, travel expenses, those are business expenses for the music business. >> reporter: smith pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and served a year in federal prison. his mother was never charged. blue maintains the doj targeted him partly because of his profession. >> i'm a public figure. for a headline, they prosecuted me. >> with link analysis, on that case alone, 30 people were

convicted. 30 different people in that same ring. so what do we say about the other 29 people that were in that ring? it was no singling out of anything. >> reporter: smith, who now performs under the name big money blue, wrote a song and produced a video about his time in federal prison. ♪ today he is adjusting to life as a convicted felon, trying to pay back the $1 million he owes to the government and volunteering with others transitioning from prison to public life. he says the money and what he did with it was worth the time he served. >> it wasn't about me. it's about the people i helped. i thought about all the people that i helped in the process. it's like, sometimes somebody has to sacrifice for other people to survive. >> reporter: what do you say to someone like that? >> i would say that these programs were designed to help hurting small businesses.

and that anyone who would use them to enrich themselves fraudulently should be held accountable. >> reporter: who pays for the fraud? >> the american taxpayer pays. >> reporter: brit biles says the government anticipated the fraud. >> the c.a.r.e.s. act itself built in protections more on the back end for policing fraud and the like. it gave additional money to the inspectors general. >> reporter: she says the program did what it set out to do. >> at the time, we were under intense pressure during a global pandemic to save workers and businesses. and that was the priority. so in that context, the program was a success. and fraudsters are actively being prosecuted, as far as i understand. >> reporter: president biden announcing a special prosecutor for pandemic fraud. >> under my administration, the watchdogs are back. [ cheers and applause ] and we're going to go after the criminals who stole billions of relief money meant for small

businesses and millions of americans. >> reporter: back in oregon, brian questenberry is forging ahead. >> what am i, who am i? hard to say. someone with some time and a side interest of trying to right a wrong. >> reporter: questionsenberry says he's filed about 50 cases under the false claims act so far. eight have settled for a substantial amount. >> almost $3 million in loan funds have been recovered. but i'm going to -- i'm in it for the long game. patient. we'll see how it goes. >> byron: our thanks to erielle. up next, the town, the team, the number 21. how a group of young men are helping uvalde to heal. if you're living with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis or active psoriatic arthritis, symptoms can sometimes take you out of the moment. now there's skyrizi, so you can show up with clearer skin...

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♪ >> byron: high school football is a source of pride for communities across the country, especially texas. but no team is taken to town on its shoulders like the uvalde coyotes. abc's john quinones met the players and coaches and saw firsthand how they are helping uvalde to heal. >> they should never be forgotten. these names should forever be carried on. >> reporter: you don't have to go very far in uvalde, texas, to be reminded of all that was lost here that tragic day. may 24th, 2022. the faces of those who were taken now line the streets of the town square. when i first met justin rin do he was starting his senior

season as captain of the coyote football team. we followed the team for an entire year, getting behind-the-scenes access. after the mass shooting, these players and coaches desperately needed to lean on each other. >> i'll never forget that day. i still see that every day. it will pop up in my mind off and on during the day, every day. >> 21 was just -- it was a lot. it was a lot of people that it affected. there's 21 members of this community that are no longer here with us. >> when that happened, everything stopped. you know, obviously the tragedy happened, but everything froze for a moment. so there was a whole lot of nothing going on at the time. but it did kind of -- it shut down what we were doing football-wise. >> you were afraid to talk to people in the grocery store or smile when you're in town, because you didn't know who you were with. you just didn't feel like

smiling. to have that, deal with that every day, then have do go to football practice? then on top of that, knowing the whole town's going to be broken hearts. unbelievable. >> i think we wanted everybody just to kind of come together and, you know, kind of take their mind off of everything just a little bit. it was kind of an opportunity for them to get a little bit of relief. >> i don't know how many kids would have handled it the way these guys have. >> we see it. whether it's shirts, some of them write stuff on their cleats, whether it's a cousin, a sister, a brother. you're constantly reminded. you can't get away from it. you try to be there for them and let them immerse themselves in this team this community this family, this brotherhood we try to build together. >> it was like a therapy to say, you didn't have to feel the sadness or the sorrow. wear it for the comfort of the

family that we have. >> the number 21, i called some of the seniors over and i said, "hey, do we retire it? do we give to it a senior? what do you want to do?" they were unanimous. >> everybody agreed, let's continue to wear it so we don't ever forget the 21. >> every time you see that number, you have to think about it. you have to -- you're doing it for them. whether you want to or not, you're forever connected to it. >> and when i was selected, it was just -- it was an honor, shock. loss of words. >> coach had announced that justin was wearing the 21. i automatically started crying. and i was just so happy. i was proud. i was -- it was a very humbling moment. >> at the beginning, i was a little skeptical. i didn't want to take away from the tragedy. but i also know that the

community has to begin to heal. >> that significant number now will always be associated with uva uvalde. he gets to carry it out friday nights. he also gets to showcase that we're still family. we're trying to heal. but we're trying to -- we're not forgetting, but we're trying to move forward. >> reporter: they fought hard on every single play. running on the memory of the 21. and giving the people of uvalde a reason to smile and cheer. for this very special football team, it was a season like none other. one they'll never forget. >> and the number forever. it will always be a part of this community and me. >> byron: the power of sport and community. our thanks to john. the new documentary, "21:loyal and true" is streaming on espn

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♪ >> byron: finally tonight, a medical first that gave a newborn a chance at life. at just 17 days old, owen munroe was almost out of options. he'd gone into heart failure just after birth. now, a year later, he's thriving. doctors now say the partial heart transplant they performed on the baby a year ago is proving to have been successful. owen's heart valves and arteries are growing with him just as they had hoped. and they're optimistic that owen will not need any more surgeries. congrats to owen and his family, that's awesome. that's "nightline" for this evening. catch full episodes on hulu. see you right back here you should feel that, like, right back here.