WASHINGTON–With more than $5 trillion in funds distributed as part of three different relief packages during the pandemic, the general lack of any strings and minimal oversight is increasingly showing up in financial fraud, with more than 500 investigators pursuing illegal activities, according to several new reports.
“The programs, which expanded unemployment benefits, paid companies to keep workers on their payrolls and also expanded a type of disaster loan, were all designed relying on the honor system,” noted the New York Times. “The result: A massive fraud wave, most likely the largest in American history, in which billions of dollars were stolen by thousands of people.”
According to the Times, some of what it described as the “oddest and most seemingly see-through” schemes included:
- 29 states paid unemployment benefits to the same person
- A Postal Service employee got a $82,900 loan for a business called “U.S. Postal Services.”
- One person got 10 loans for 10 nonexistent bathroom-renovation businesses using the email address of a burrito shop
Nearly 40,000 Cases Open
According to the Times, two years later authorities are still pursuing tens of thousands of additional cases of fraud.
“There are 500 people working on pandemic-fraud cases across nearly two dozen government agencies, plus investigators from the FBI, the Secret Service, the Postal Inspection Service and the Internal Revenue Service,” reported the Times, adding that agents in the Labor Department alone are still working on some 39,000 cases.
“The Small Business Administration office is investigating two-million loan applications,” the Times added. “And that’s on top of the 1,500 people who have already been charged with defrauding pandemic-aid programs. More than 450 people have been convicted.”
“There are years and years and years of work ahead of us,” Kevin Chambers, the Department of Justice’s chief pandemic investigator.