The U.S. Justice Department has said that it has retrieved over 1.4 billion dollars in COVID-19 relief funds that criminals had stolen and charged more than 3,000 defendants with crimes in federal districts across the country.

The Justice Department declared the result of a nationwide enforcement action to combat coronavirus fraud, including federal criminal charges against 371 defendants for offences related to over 836 million dollars in alleged COVID fraud.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement, “This latest action, involving over 300 defendants and over 830 Million dollars in alleged COVID-19 fraud, should send a clear message: the COVID-19 public health emergency may have ended, but the Justice Department’s work to identify and prosecute those whole stole pandemic relief funds is far from over.”

This enforcement action has resulted in a total of 119 defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial during the sweep, according to the Justice Department.

The United States is investigating many fraud cases pegged to U.S. government assistance programs. In May 2021, Garland started a COVID-19 fraud enforcement task force.

The previous year, the U.S. Justice Department appointed federal prosecutor Kevin Chamber to lead its efforts to investigate alleged fraud schemes targeting pandemic assistance programs.

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Over 200 million dollars from the U.S. government’s COVID-19 relief programs were potentially stolen, a federal inspector reported in late June, adding that the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) had weakened its controls in a rush to disburse the funds.

Labor Department said fraudsters likely stole 45.6 billion dollars

According to a report, In September 2022, the inspector general for the U.S. Labor Department said fraudsters likely stole 45.6 billion dollars from the United States unemployment insurance program during the coronavirus outbreak by employing strategies like using security numbers of deceased individuals.

Earlier this year, a separate watchdog report said the U.S. government likely awarded about 5.4 billion dollars in COVID-19 aid to people with unsettled social security numbers.

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