U.S. charges 57 with fraud involving pandemic paycheck aid, Justice Department says
I think that most realize that government programs are targets for fraud. You can search for the stats on various government program fraud- medical, disaster relief, etc. Some are easier to get away with than others.
This article is about the Pandemic Paycheck Aid program. This one is not easy to get away with because it is a loan that you have to pay back unless you meet the requirements to get a waiver. But people are trying to game the system. Think up a name for a business, make up a large number of employees, file out the application, and poof- you get a very large check from Uncle Sam. People have done this and then bought high end sports cars, houses, vacations, etc.
Dummies have to realize that when they submit their receipts, etc to get the repayment waived they are going to have a problem..., or maybe not. Criminals is stupid!
Just think of the amount of fraud a national health insurance system would have to deal with. (Private insurers have incentives to combat fraud and do a pretty good job at it.)Federal law enforcement authorities have charged 57 people with stealing $175 million from an aid program meant to help small businesses weather pandemic lockdowns, officials said on Thursday, adding that they are eyeing hundreds more suspected cases of fraud.
Officials said they have identified 500 individuals who may have defrauded the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and that, in many cases, criminal rings had worked together to steal funds from the program. The Justice Department along with other agencies would focus more closely on this organized criminal activity, officials said.
“The involvement of these rings isn’t surprising, but it is particularly troubling to us here at the department, we will be focusing on these types of cases, going forward,” acting assistant Attorney General Brian Rabbitt said during a press conference.
Officials said they believed fraud in the program was “significant” but declined to estimate what proportion of the funds, which were passed by Congress as part of a $3 trillion pandemic rescue package, had been stolen.
A congressional panel last week said it had identified tens of thousands of the program’s 5.2 million loans that may have been defrauded or misused, amounting to potentially billions of taxpayer funds.
This week, JPMorgan Chase & CoJPM.N, which dished out nearly $30 billion PPP loans, said it was working with law enforcement after identifying cases of customers "misusing" the funds.
Read the rest of the article at the link.