The Secret Service has recovered an absolutely mind-blowing amount of cash from fraudulently obtained pandemic loans and is now in the process of returning that money to the Small Business Administration, the agency announced on Friday.
So how much dough are we talking here? Try $286 million.
According to a report published by Just the News, the agency’s Orlando office started the investigation into these loans, discovering that the alleged conspirators involved submitted Economic Injury Disaster Loan applications using fake or stolen employment and personal information.
The individuals involved in the crime then used Green Dot, an online bank, to help hid and move the money they received from the loans.
Here’s more information from Just the News:
The alleged fraudsters then used the online bank Green Dot to conceal and move the money they received.
The Secret Service worked with the bank to identify roughly 15,000 accounts and seize the $286 million connected to the accounts, according to an agency news release.
“This forfeiture effort and those to come are a direct and necessary response to the unprecedented size and scope of pandemic relief fraud,” said Kevin Chambers, the department’s director for COVID-19 fraud enforcement.
Billions have been fraudulently claimed through various pandemic relief programs – including Paycheck Protection Program loans, unemployment insurance and others that were rolled out in the midst of the worldwide pandemic that shutdown global economies for months, the wire service also reports.
This is bound to happen whenever the government decides to do some kind of program like this. That doesn’t mean that the idea of doing a program to help businesses was a bad idea, necessarily. Especially since the reason companies during that time were suffering is because the government shut folks down for the pandemic.
However, people, particularly criminals, are pretty adept at finding ways to take advantage of the system and create opportunity for themselves to get rich quick where none seemingly existed.
Heck, the government itself has a lot in common with these kinds of individuals. Democrats in Congress are always finding sneaky, dirty, and underhanded ways to stuff hidden spending in bills for programs that will have zero benefit for the American people.
That’s sort of their only superpower when you think about it.
Look what they did with the recent Inflation Reduction Act as an example. The name of the legislation gives you the idea that this is going to help reduce the rate of inflation that is causing a spike in the price of goods we need for daily living and provide much needed financial relief.
Nope.
It was mostly about health care and climate issues, not to mention an egregious and terrifying expansion of the Internal Revenue Service.
Leftists talking heads in the media even discussed how the whole point of the name was to trick Sen. Joe Manchin into supporting the bill. It worked. See what I’m saying? Democrats and criminals seem to be cut from the same cloth.
Let’s hope the red wave happens and we can oust a lot of these crooks and improve the overall state of our country.