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Inspector General: $46 Billion In ‘Covid' Unemployment Subsidies Probably Went To Fraudsters
[Federalist] The Labor Department inspector general noted the Biden administration keeps slow-walking efforts to help fight fraud.Haley Joel Osment sees dead people. Government officials give them welfare benefits. That conclusion comes from a report recently released by the Labor Department’s inspector general, providing an update on its investigations of pandemic-related unemployment fraud. Unfortunately, the document provides only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, both in identifying the scope of the problem and holding fraudsters to account. $46 BILLION DOWN THE DRAIN The inspector general report updated earlier documents quantifying the scope of potentially fraudulent unemployment insurance payments made during the pandemic. Specifically, the office examined four types of potential fraud: claims 1) filed in multiple states; 2) made in the name of deceased individuals; 3) using suspicious email accounts; or 4) filed by federal prisoners. strong>LITTLE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR FRAUDSTERS A press release accompanying the report hinted at the massive nature of the fraud. A few sentences discussed efforts to hold scammers to account: With less than 140 criminal investigators, the [inspector general] leveraged data analytics to direct its limited resources to those matters that pose the greatest risk to the [unemployment insurance] program. The [inspector general] is focusing on large-scale identity theft schemes involving multiple victims and organized criminal groups, including street gangs. In other words, if someone doesn’t belong to a gang, or “only” submitted fraudulent claims for a few thousand dollars (or even tens of thousands of dollars), he’s not going to get prosecuted. The press release attempted to praise prosecutors for charging 1,000 individuals, and obtaining convictions that “have resulted in more than 7,000 months” — about 583 years — “of incarceration.” But given that investigators identified nearly $46 billion in fraud, the amount of accountability seems massively outweighed by the scale of the original crimes. Posted by: NoMoreBS 2022-10-04 |
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