Fraudsters have stolen close to $100 billion in Covid-19 relief funds, the U.S. Secret Service said Tuesday.
Much of the fraudulent activity has been directed at the trillions of dollars provided by Congress to help businesses and individuals survive financially during the pandemic.
“While fraud related to personal protective equipment (PPE) was of primary concern to law enforcement, including the Secret Service, early in the pandemic, the release of federal funding through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act has attracted the attention of individuals and organized criminal networks worldwide,” the agency said in a statement announcing the appointment of a new national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator.
Specific programs that have been targeted by an array of criminals include the Paycheck Protection Program, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.
Roy Dotson, the new fraud recovery coordinator, said the agency currently has more than 900 active criminal investigations into relief fund fraud. “It’s a wide range because the pot was so big,” Dotson told CNBC. “You not only have your typical transnational organized groups and domestic organized groups, criminal groups, but you have individuals that decided to take advantage of that.”
The agency said that it had recovered about $2.3 billion so far and arrested more than 100 people. “I’ve been in law enforcement for over 29 years and worked some complex fraud investigations for 20 plus years, and I’ve never seen something at this scale,” Dotson said.
