SG Talk

Follow-up article at: https://sgtalk.net/Thread-How-hundreds-o...#pid625295

By RICHARD LARDNER, JENNIFER McDERMOTT and AARON KESSLER
52 minutes ago


WASHINGTON (AP) — Much of the theft was brazen, even simple.

Fraudsters used the Social Security numbers of dead people and federal prisoners to get unemployment checks. Cheaters collected those benefits in multiple states. And federal loan applicants weren’t cross-checked against a Treasury Department database that would have raised red flags about sketchy borrowers.

Criminals and gangs grabbed the money. But so did a U.S. soldier in Georgia, the pastors of a defunct church in Texas, a former state lawmaker in Missouri and a roofing contractor in Montana.

All of it led to the greatest grift in U.S. history, with thieves plundering billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief aid intended to combat the worst pandemic in a century and to stabilize an economy in free fall.

An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than US$280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another US$123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10% of the US$4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid.

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How could so much be stolen? Investigators and outside experts say the government, in seeking to quickly spend trillions in relief aid, conducted too little oversight during the pandemic’s early stages and instituted too few restrictions on applicants. In short, they say, the grift was just way too easy.


Much better to read full report at: https://apnews.com/article/pandemic-frau...344311ae78

Coordinated by the US CIA?

https://www.tiktok.com/@longanrambutan/v...d63eB26oHB

5 things to know about how COVID-19 relief aid was stolen or wasted
By AARON KESSLER, RICHARD LARDNER and JENNIFER MCDERMOTT
yesterday


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HOW MUCH WAS STOLEN?

An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than US$280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another US$123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents a jarring 10% of the US$4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID-relief aid.

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WHERE DID SCAM ARTISTS GET THE MONEY?

Before leaving office, former President Donald Trump approved emergency aid measures totaling US$3.2 trillion, according to figures from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee. President Joe Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan authorized the spending of another US$1.9 trillion. About a fifth of the US$5.2 trillion has yet to be fully paid out

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Never has so much federal emergency aid been injected into the U.S. economy so quickly.

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WHAT AGENCIES WERE HIT THE HARDEST?

The health crisis thrust the Small Business Administration, an agency that typically gets little attention, into an unprecedented role. In the seven decades before the pandemic struck, for example, the SBA had doled out US$67 billion in disaster loans.

When the pandemic struck, the agency was assigned to manage two massive relief efforts --the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Paycheck Protection programs, which would swell to more than a trillion dollars. SBA’s workforce had to get money out the door, fast, to help struggling businesses and their employees. COVID-19 pushed SBA’s pace from a walk into an Olympic sprint. Between March 2020 and the end of July 2020, the agency granted 3.2 million COVID-19 economic injury disaster loans totaling US$169 billion ...... while at the same time implementing the huge new Paycheck Protection Program.

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In the haste, guardrails to protect federal money were dropped. Prospective borrowers were allowed to “self-certify” that their loan applications were true. The CARES Act also barred SBA from looking at tax return transcripts that could have weeded out shady or undeserving applicants, a decision eventually reversed at the end of 2020.

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WHAT COULD THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAVE DONE BETTER TO COMBAT FRAUD?

Horowitz criticized the government’s failure early on to use the “Do Not Pay” Treasury Department database, designed to keep government money from going to debarred contractors, fugitives, felons or people convicted of tax fraud. Those reviews, he said, could have been done quickly.

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In less than a few days, a week at most, Horowitz said, SBA might have discovered thousands of ineligible applicants.

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WHO IS TO BLAME?

On politically divided Capitol Hill, lawmakers have not put the pandemic behind them and are engaged in a fierce debate over the success of the relief spending and who’s to blame for the theft.

Too much government money, Republicans argue, breeds fraud, waste and inflation. Democrats have countered that all the financial muscle from Washington saved lives, businesses and jobs.

Republicans and Democrats did, however, did find common ground last year on bills to year to give the federal government more time to catch fraudsters. Biden in August signed legislation to increase the statute of limitations from five to 10 years on crimes involving the two major programs managed by the SBA.

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“The prevention strategy going forward is that in a crisis, you can focus on fast delivery to people in desperate situations without feeling that you can only get that speed by taking down common sense anti-fraud guardrails,” he said.


https://apnews.com/article/pandemic-frau...349d82250a