Turns out it also kept a lot of crooks afloat. No surprise to us here in Washington. Our COVID aid program ended up being targeted by a Nigerian fraud ring that managed to make off with hundreds of millions of dollars.
This was a New York Times headline from yesterday: “.” The story was written by our favorite NYT reporter David Fahrenthold, and it’s about the people who stole possibly billions from the program designed to keep unemployed people afloat when COVID hit.
But it wasn’t just Nigerians. Plenty of Americans did it too. The COVID relief program revealed just how dumb it was for the government to operate on the honor system to get the money out as quickly as possible.Oh, the lies on those applications! Non-existent businesses asking for small business loans. Fabricated tax documents. One guy filed dozens of phony unemployment applications and got $1.2 million in pre-paid debit cards for himself and his friends – and then posted a rap about it!He rapped himself straight into jail.
The Times reports the Labor Department alone has opened 39,000 fraud investigations. The Small Business Administration has a pile of two million suspicious loan applications to check, and 50 investigators to check them.No question – bureaucratic incompetence is a big problem, but the other big issue is governing a nation with so many liars.
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