Scammers Have Stolen Nearly $100 Billion in COVID Relief Funds, Says the Secret Service

The U.S. Secret Service says criminals have stolen almost $100 billion in pandemic relief funds. However, more than $2.3 billion have been recovered. 100 suspects have been arrested in connection to the recent scams.

Individuals have been using COVID relief funds to support their households, families, and small businesses during this trying time. Some have taken advantage of the relief funds and used them for their benefit. According to CNBC, the criminals’ backgrounds range from organized groups to individuals.

CNBC says the stolen funds were recovered from the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, and another assisting program.

The U.S. Secret Service is a federal law enforcement agency that oversees criminal investigations. They are in the midst of transitioning to a new coordinator to dig deeper into the fraudulent pandemic relief funds. Roy Dotson is the new man in charge.

He says, “I’ve been in law enforcement for over 29 years and worked some complex fraud investigations for 20 plus years, and I’ve never seen something at this scale.” Apparently, the rise in criminal cases in connection to stealing money has become easier for some criminals. The Secret Service has 900 open investigations related to pandemic relief fraud.

Dotson continues, “You not only have your typical transnational organized groups and domestic organized groups, criminal groups, but you have individuals that decided to take advantage of that. So, there’s many different patterns and investigative intelligence that we develop that I can’t really go into. But we’ve mapped out kind of some of the different characteristics of different groups.”

Green Dot and PayPal were affected. A PayPal spokesperson says, “every instance of potential fraud very seriously and we proactively work with law enforcement agencies and industry partners, as well as use our own sophisticated systems, to detect fraud and keep our customers and their payments safe.”

CNBC says that tech-savvy people have opened multiple online banking accounts with investment programs dumping money from what was received through COVID relief funds.