Thousands of thieves potentially plundered more than $280 billion in federal COVID-19 aid and wasted or misspent another $123 billion,…
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Abhishek Krishnan, an Indian citizen, allegedly submitted at least 17 fraudulent PPP loan applications to multiple banks on behalf of fake companies and including falsified tax documents and fake employees.
The task force and its attached prosecutors will “work jointly to hold accountable criminals who enriched themselves at the expense of taxpayers by defrauding economic aid programs,” said US Attorney Josh Hurwit.
In the largest pandemic-related fraud uncovered to date, a network of individuals and organizations tied to a nonprofit operating in Minnesota used a complex web of shell companies and bribes to obtain federal pandemic funds.
States face few limitations from Congress on how state and local governments can allocate the funds. Lax reporting requirements from the White House allow the diversion of tens of millions of dollars.
Nearly half of the $52.6 billion allocated for “Revenue Replacement” under the American Rescue Plan Act went to projects that mentioned police, law enforcement, courts, jails and prisons, a Marshall Project investigation found.
Estimates of the overall amount of federal, state, and municipal Covid relief funds distributed fraudulently range from $100 billion to over $500 billion. According to experts, it will probably take years to fully account for the fraud.
The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maryland’s public corruption unit are taking a close look at Baltimore City School Police Detective Lawrence Smith, the force’s top overtime earner. Smith claimed more than 37 hours of overtime per week on average.
The officers claim that Mayor Eric Adams’ administration failed to uphold their right to exercise their religion and is unfairly attempting to fire them, even though they continued to get tested weekly while refusing to get vaccinated.
Overall, U.S. prisons from the end of February 2020 to the end of February 2021 saw the number of people in the custody of state, federal or privately operated prisons under state or federal contracts drop by more than 16 percent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.