I was wondering if anyone else would pick up on this.

Every time I see "e-filed", the first thing I think of, is this legitimate. How are you just filing a 941 now for 2020? Two years late filed. If a company had employees, and missed a filing, the IRS should have been all over them for unfilled returns.

I wonder if some people are even being led down this path by their ERC processing company, or if they are giving it a shot on their own and not knowing how the payroll system works.

One way they will get caught are W-2s. As you know, 941 returns filed with the IRS are balanced against the W-2s filed with SSA. You file a bunch of imaginary wages on 941s now and no W-2s were filed, then they are going to eventually get caught. I am hoping the IRS has picked up on this and they are performing that validation before issuing a credit, but doubtful.