DOJ finds more than $8 billion in COVID aid fraud

[srose58089]

Source: The Hill

BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL - 03/10/22 05:15 PM EST

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has uncovered a vast array of alleged fraudulent and criminal activities tied to more than $8 billion in federal COVID-19 aid, the agency announced Thursday.

In response, the agency said it was immediately appointing a new director tasked specifically with coronavirus fraud enforcement.

Kevin Chambers, who joined the agency as an associate deputy attorney general, "plans to focus on large-scale criminal enterprises and foreign actors who sought to profit at the expense of the American people," the DOJ said.

The move follows President Biden's State of the Union pledge to go after "the criminals who stole billions in relief money meant for small businesses and millions of Americans."

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/finance/597764-doj-finds-more-than-8-billion-in-covid-aid-fraud

[Journeyman]

1. Sic 'em . . .

[ToxMarz]

2. I bet they find a lot of them milling around

on Wall Street.

[DURHAM D]

3. Start with Jared. nt

[Tanuki]

9. And his college roommate

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna5692

"A federal agency that was run by a college friend of Jared Kushner and assigned $100 million to spend on fixing the Covid supply chain crunch has so far failed to invest a single dime, according to a new government watchdog report.

In 2020, the Trump administration directed the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to loan out $100 million in Pentagon funds through the CARES Act to "finance the domestic production of strategic resources needed to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, and to strengthen any relevant domestic medical supply chains."

Companies were encouraged to apply for financial backing to help increase U.S. distribution of ventilators, vaccines, medical testing supplies, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and other relevant products. According to a new Government Accountability Office report, 178 applications flooded into the agency’s downtown Washington office but no money flowed out.

The agency’s portal for loan applications has now been paused and its authority to make Covid-related loans ends on March 26. 

Adam Boehler, briefly a college roommate of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, ran the International Development Finance Corporation starting in fall 2019. The DFC had been created with bipartisan support in 2018 to help steer private investment to government-funded projects in the developing world.
.......
Said the GAO’s Kenney, “Here we are two years in and without an evaluation we can’t really understand if this is a tool to address these needs in a national emergency.”

Auditors found DFC has not tracked how much money it spent on the Covid supply-chain program but agency officials said at least $1 million was spent sifting through the proposals."...(more)

[TomDaisy]

4. Mnuchin. Gleefully paying out our money to trump's cronies

[C Moon]

5. Sick fukin' people. I really hate really hate really hate people like that.

[Socal31]

6. I'm a Chief Compliance Officer by trade.

On my personal time, I uncovered and reported this exact type of fraud in PUA, PPP, and the NY/CA small business grants.

Never heard anything back (not supposed to, really), but the fraud never stopped.

[Cheezoholic]

7. 8 billion out of 6 trillion? Thats all?

Thats like popping someone for pocketing a piece of penny candy in El Dorado. They be needin to throw me a bit of a bigger sock full of bullshit. Vast, lmfao.

[Socal31]

8. Not even close.

A single program in California alone is over $20Billion.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-25/californias-unemployment-fraud-20-billion

[karynnj]

12. 8 billion is not insignificant, and it could be the tip of the iceberg

In addition, it is important that when the DOJ KNOWS fraud has happened, they should charge the accused culprits. That alone may discourage some temped to pocket government money that they shouldn't in the future.

I would agree that your analysis, if you defend the size of the denominator, could be used to say that, though $8 billion is a large amount, the identified fraud is not of a size that there was rampant fraud.

[mopinko]

10. they were set up to be looted.

someone i know was looking at these things, and insisted it was easy money, just laying around, and i should get some. fill put a form, get $10k for my farm.

i didnt.

[Farmer-Rick]

11. Yeah, me too

They said it was easy money but I would have to lie about my farm and production in order to get it. NO Thanks.

But really, it seems it was set up to be raided by the filthy rich. The filthy rich barely pay any taxes. Why did they and their wealth extraction systems need our tax dollars? Is this capitalism?

[mopinko]

13. it's kleptocracy.

authoritarianism => corruption every fucking time.

[Kali]

14. Pretty sure the family who bought up a bunch of local property around me was scamming this kind of $

It will be interesting if they get taken down at some point.

[usajumpedtheshark]

15. The Republican Congress designed it without the necessary checks to avoid fraud

It was designed to permit fraud

[Polybius]

16. Does this count those receiving federal unemployment while working off-the-books?

Because I knew a ton of those people.

[Farmer-Rick]

17. This looks like they are trying to get back the big bucks

Millions and billions. There certainly weren't enough people cheating their states' unemployment rules to claw back much. Besides, the state would have to claw that back.

Many states had it so you could collect unemployment and work at the same time if you were not making as much as you were before you got fired. Checkout how generous California's rules were.

Some states were really good about this. Some were miserly little pigs.