{"id":2010617,"date":"2023-08-24T10:56:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-24T14:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/doj-says-its-seized-1-4-billion-in-stolen-covid-relief-funds\/"},"modified":"2023-08-24T10:58:59","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T14:58:59","slug":"doj-says-its-seized-1-4-billion-in-stolen-covid-relief-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/doj-says-its-seized-1-4-billion-in-stolen-covid-relief-funds\/","title":{"rendered":"DOJ seizes $1.4B in stolen COVID relief funds."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdoj-says-its-seized-1-4-billion-in-stolen-covid-relief-funds%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2010617&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div>\n<h2>Justice Department Seizes $1.4 Billion in Stolen COVID-19 Relief Funds<\/h2>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The U.S.\u200c Justice Department \u200dannounced on Wednesday that it \u2064has successfully seized over $1.4\u2064 billion in COVID-19 relief funds that were stolen by criminals. Additionally, more than 3,000 defendants have been charged with\u200d federal crimes across the country.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3>Nationwide Enforcement Action Against COVID Fraud<\/h3>\n<p>The Justice Department revealed the outcomes\u200d of a nationwide enforcement action aimed at\u200c combating coronavirus fraud. This includes federal criminal charges against 371 defendants, accused\u200c of offenses related to over $836 million in alleged COVID fraud.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;This latest action, involving over 300 defendants and over $830 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud, should send a clear message: the COVID-19 public \u2063health emergency may have ended, but the Justice\u2063 Department&#8217;s work to identify and prosecute those\u2063 who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/371-charged-for-covid-19-fraud-totaling-836-million-doj\/\" title=\"DOJ charges 371 for 6M COVID-19 fraud.\">stole pandemic relief funds<\/a> is far from over,&#8221;\u200b stated U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>During the operation, a total of 119 defendants \u200ceither pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, as reported by the Justice Department.<\/p>\n<h3>Continued Efforts to Investigate Fraud<\/h3>\n<p>The United States is actively investigating numerous fraud cases related to \u200dgovernment \u2064assistance \u2062programs.\u2062 In May 2021, U.S. Attorney General Garland established\u200c a COVID fraud enforcement task force.<\/p>\n<p>Last\u2063 year,\u2063 federal prosecutor Kevin Chambers was appointed \u200dby\u2062 the Justice Department \u200dto lead the investigation into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/doj-says-its-seized-1-4-billion-in-stolen-covid-relief-funds\/\" title=\"DOJ seizes .4B in stolen COVID relief funds.\">alleged fraud schemes targeting pandemic\u200d assistance programs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Concerns Over Stolen Relief Funds<\/h3>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/federal-agencies-using-just-25-percent-of-their-office-space-watchdog-reveals\/\" title=\"Watchdog reveals federal agencies only using 25% of office space.\">federal watchdog revealed<\/a> that over $200 billion\u2063 from the U.S. government&#8217;s \u2062COVID-19 relief programs were potentially\u200d stolen. The report also highlighted that the \u2064U.S. Small \u200dBusiness Administration (SBA) had \u2062weakened its controls in a rush to distribute the funds.<\/p>\n<p>In September 2022, the inspector general for the U.S. Labor Department estimated that fraudsters \u200clikely stole $45.6 billion from the country&#8217;s unemployment insurance \u200bprogram during the coronavirus outbreak. They employed tactics such \u2063as using \u200bSocial \u2063Security \u200cnumbers of deceased individuals.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, a separate watchdog report suggested that the U.S. government may have \u2063awarded approximately $5.4 billion \u200cin COVID-19 aid to individuals with questionable Social Security numbers.<\/p>\n<p>(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Stephen Coates)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Justice Department has seized $1.4 billion in stolen COVID-19 relief funds and charged 3,000 defendants across federal districts. This nationwide enforcement action aims to combat coronavirus fraud, resulting in federal criminal charges against 371 defendants for various offenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":2010618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2010617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2010617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2010618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2010617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2010617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2010617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}