The Justice Department on Thursday appointed Kevin Chambers to lead efforts to prosecute cases of fraud and attempted fraud involving at least $8 billion in Covid-19 relief funds.
The decision to appoint a prosecutor to go after the stimulus fraud follows President Biden’s State of the Union address, where he pledged to “go after criminals who stole billions in emergency aid.”
Mr. Chambers, who served as an assistant deputy attorney general for the past year, will direct the department’s criminal and civil enforcement efforts and oversee the investigation and prosecution of fraud allegations.
Since the onset of the health crisis, the federal government has sent approximately $5 trillion to American households, small businesses, schools and other institutions to help the U.S. economy recover from the pandemic. While the money has accelerated vaccination campaigns across the country, helped unemployed workers and helped schools hire educators to tackle learning loss, the funds have also sparked a series of high-profile fraud cases.
In Florida, authorities said, a woman paid a hitman with part of a $15,000 loan intended to help troubled small businesses. In Georgia, a man spent $57,000 on coronavirus emergency aid to purchase a rare Pokémon trading card that federal authorities later seized. And others across the country have spent the aid money on Ferraris, Lamborghinis and luxury jewelry, officials said.
Mr Chambers will target “large-scale criminal enterprises and foreign actors” who have misused the money. Those efforts include setting up “strike teams” ahead of the department’s next phase to deal with pandemic fraud.
“Our strike teams will strengthen the department’s existing efforts and will include analysts and data scientists to review data, agents to investigate the cases, and prosecutors and trial attorneys to file charges and try the cases,” said Mr. Chambers in a statement.
The department’s efforts so far have resulted in criminal charges against more than 1,000 defendants and the seizure of more than $1 billion in proceeds from the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which provided loans to small businesses during the pandemic.
Early investigations also indicated that “international organized crime groups” targeted federal programs that distributed unemployment benefits. Both international and domestic criminals have used stolen identities to claim benefits, the department said. More than 430 people have been arrested and charged with federal crimes related to unemployment insurance fraud, according to the ministry, since the start of the pandemic.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland created the Covid-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force last May. It works with other government agencies to prosecute “the most guilty” criminals.
“We will continue to hold accountable those who seek to exploit the pandemic for personal gain, to protect vulnerable populations and to continue to hold accountable for the integrity of taxpayer-funded programs,” Garland said in a statement Thursday.
