Opportunity in crisis: $100 bn ‘stolen’ from Covid-19 relief in the US!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Unscrupulous elements in several countries, including India, exploited the pandemic and made a quick buck out of the misery of the Covid-19 affected millions across the world last year. But nothing compares with what they did in the US: stealing a whopping USD 100 billion from relief packages.
According to the US Secret Service revelations, the fraudsters stole a minimum of USD 100 billion from Covid-19 relief programs set up in 2020 to help businesses and people who lost their jobs because of the pandemic, the media reported on Wednesday.
“We base the estimate on Secret Service cases and data from the Labor Department and the Small Business Administration,” said Roy Dotson, the agency’s national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator.
These cases do not include the Covid-19 fraud cases prosecuted by the Justice Department, the reports said, showing that this could even be the tip of the iceberg.
Only about 3 percent of the USD3.4 trillion worth of relief funds were disbursed. The amount stolen from pandemic benefits programs shows “the sheer size of the pot is enticing to the criminals,” Dotson said. Most of it came from unemployment fraud.
According to the Labor Department, about USD 87 billion in unemployment benefits could have been paid improperly, with a significant portion because of fraud.
The Secret Service seized over USD 1.2 billion while investigating unemployment insurance and loan fraud and has returned more than USD 2.3 billion of fraudulently got funds by working with financial partners and states to reverse transactions. It has over 900 active criminal investigations into pandemic fraud, with cases in every state, and around 100 people have been arrested so far.
Last week, the Justice Department said its fraud section had prosecuted over 150 defendants in over 95 criminal cases and seized around USD 75 million in cash proceeds derived from fraudulently got Paycheck Protection Programme funds, as well as many real estate properties and luxury items purchased with the proceeds.
