Here’s How Much COVID Relief Money Was Stolen
A government watchdog has found that losses of over $200 billion in COVID relief money are due to potential waste, fraud, and abuse. It is the highest estimate of stolen and wasted COVID money.
The Office of Inspector General of the Small Business Administration released the report earlier this week. It is an increase from the $100 billion in a previous estimate.
The Blaze has more:
The relief initiatives included the Paycheck Protection and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs, created to provide emergency financial relief to small businesses and those who lost their jobs due to restrictive lockdown measures.
The report estimated that at least 17% of the relief funds, which totaled approximately $1.2 trillion, were disbursed to potential fraudsters, including “more than $136 billion COVID-19 EIDLs and $64 billion in PPP funds.”
Inspector General Hannibal “Mike” Ware noted that the OIG’s investigation into the potentially stolen funds has, so far, resulted in 1,011 indictments, 803 arrests, and 529 convictions. Approximately $30 billion in fraudulently obtained relief funds have been seized and returned to the SBA.
Ware previously predicted during a 2021 interview with ABC News, “In terms of the monetary value, the amount of fraud in these COVID relief programs is going to be larger than any government program that came before it.”
When the government shut down the economy in a futile attempt to destroy the COVID-19 virus, it turned the money printers to full blast to keep some of the economy afloat. When Congress approved all this spending, it paid little attention to issues of waste, fraud, and abuse. The government wanted to get money in the hands of people and businesses as fast as it could.
The consequences of all this spending are devastating. As of now, it appears to have destroyed all opposition to an expanded welfare state. It has created the inflation that we continue to struggle through. Finally, it has led to all this theft of taxpayer dollars.
The lockdowns were the biggest policy mistake of recent years. It wrecked the economy and destroyed the notion of self-reliance in society. It crushed civil liberties including freedom of assembly and even freedom of speech. The fact that recipients stole hundreds of billions of dollars is icing on the cake.
The only saving grace of this is that the government is prosecuting some of these thieves. But it is unlikely that it recover most of this money.
