A staggering 371 Americans have been charged with stealing roughly $836 million in COVID relief funds — including gang members who used the money to hire hitmen, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. The charges were the result of a three-month-long joint investigation conducted by law enforcement agencies across the nation from May through July, according to the DOJ. Sixty-three of those facing charges include gang members and defendants with connections to violent crimes. Some used the funds — meant to help struggling citizens and business owners — were used to pay for murder-for-hire plots, acting director of the COVID-19 fraud enforcement task force Michael Galdo said.
Many of the alleged fraudsters misused pandemic unemployment insurance benefits as well as funds from Small Business Administration programs including the Paycheck Protection Program and economic injury disaster loans, according to the Justice Department. Overall, the DOJ has seized more than $1.4 billion in misused pandemic-era relief funds and charged more than 3,000 Americans with crimes related to the fraud since it began investigating such corruption. The Paycheck Protection Program, also known as the PPP loan program, has been the source of some of the worst fraud. An astonishing 17% of loans cashed out from the program — about $200 billion — was stolen by fraudsters, according to a report from the Small Business Administration’s Office published last month.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/23/371-charged-with-stealing-836m-in-covid-relief-funds/
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