Corporations owned by YouTubers received federal PPP loans meant for small businesses

Evidence

During the coronavirus pandemic, Jeffree Star Cosmetics and Killer Merch were both recipients of Payment Protection Program loans, or “PPP” loans, federal loans intended to keep workers on payrolls—the former receiving a loan for 413,675, the latter for 649,970, supporting a reported twenty-one and fifty-nine employees respectively. MrBeast also reportedly received a PPP loan to support forty employees. Although some may be shocked to hear about sizable governmental loans for people best known as YouTubers, we know by now that Star and his businesses take in a substantial amount of income, though this income is concealed behind the limited filing requirements of privately held corporations. It may be more surprising to hear not only of MrBeast’s PPP loan but that his company, MrBeastYouTube LLC, employs at least forty people. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 317

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete instance feeding the Corpocene application: the YouTuber personally qualifies as a ‘small business’ employee-cluster under federal loan criteria.