Description
The U.S. Secret Service says nearly $100 billion has been stolen from COVID-19 relief programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
Summary
- 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.
- 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.
- Law enforcement early in the pandemic focused on fraud related to personal protective equipment, the Secret Service said.