Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/16/business/economy/covid-pandemic-fraud.html
https://archive.ph/UL7AP

Prosecutors Struggle to Catch Up to a Tidal Wave of Pandemic Fraud
Investigators say there was so much fraud in federal covid-relief programs that — even after two years of work and hundreds of prosecutions — they’re still just getting started.
By David A. Fahrenthold
Aug. 16, 2022 Updated 8:29 a.m. ET

In the midst of the pandemic the government gave unemployment benefits to the incarcerated, the imaginary and the dead. It sent money to “farms” that turned out to be front yards. It paid people who were on the government’s “Do Not Pay List.” It gave loans to 342 people who said their name was “N/A.”

As the virus shuttered businesses and forced people out of work, the federal government sent a flood of relief money into programs aimed at helping the newly unemployed and boosting the economy. That included $3.1 trillion that former President Donald J. Trump approved in 2020, followed by a $1.9 trillion package signed into law in 2021 by President Biden.

But those dollars came with few strings and minimal oversight. The result: one of the largest frauds in American history, with billions of dollars stolen by thousands of people, including at least one amateur who boasted of his criminal activity on YouTube.

Now, prosecutors are trying to catch up.


Vinath Oudomsine bought a $57,000 Pokemon card after receiving a pandemic loan from the Small Business Administration for a nonexistent business. Credit...U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia


Fontrell Antonio Baines, a rapper who performs as Nuke Bizzle, posted a video in which he bragged about getting rich by submitting false unemployment claims. Credit...Nuke Bizzle, via YouTube


Richard Ayvazyan was convicted in a scheme to steal $20 million in Covid-19 relief funds. Credit...Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images

[The Magistrate]

1. A Proper Use Of Law Enforcement, Sir

There is little would do more to help stem any 'rise in crime' than a crackdown on lucrative fraud. How that flourishes sets a tone which, unlike wealth, will trickle down.


"A fish rots from the head."