Say it ain't so... From ABC News:
Secret Service: Nearly $100B stolen in pandemic relief funds
Nearly $100 billion at minimum has been stolen from COVID-19 relief programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic, the U.S. Secret Service said Tuesday.
The estimate is based 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, in an interview. The Secret Service didn't include COVID-19 fraud cases prosecuted by the Justice Department.
They are working on clawing that money back but still - they could have been a little more careful:
The Secret Service said it has seized more than $1.2 billion while investigating unemployment insurance and loan fraud and has returned more than $2.3 billion of fraudulently obtained funds by working with financial partners and states to reverse transactions. The Secret Service says it has more than 900 active criminal investigations into pandemic fraud, with cases in every state, and 100 people have been arrested so far.
The Justice Department said last week that its fraud section had prosecuted over 150 defendants in more than 95 criminal cases and had seized over $75 million in cash proceeds derived from fraudulently obtained Paycheck Protection Program funds, as well as numerous real estate properties and luxury items purchased with the proceeds.
Pulling shit like this needs to hurt and it needs to hurt bad. They should make a very public example of a couple of people from each city. Long sentences. This is our money they are stealing - the fed.gov does not have any other real source of income. Our tax dollars are what make it run.
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