Biden begins push for funding for pandemic fraud measures
President
In a strategy announced Thursday, the administration called for money and more time to prosecute cases, to put into place new ways to prevent identity theft and to help people whose identities were stolen.
On a call with reporters,
“It's just so clear and the evidence is so strong that a dollar smartly spent here will return to the taxpayers, or save, at least
Sperling said the request would be part of the budget proposal Biden is scheduled to make
Soon after the swaths of the
Money went to boost unemployment insurance programs, help those in the gig economy who lost work, cover government costs and keep businesses afloat.
“On the whole, those programs did enormous good," Sperling said. “There were also cases where guardrails were unnecessarily lowered, which led to unnecessary and massive fraud.”
A congressional committee found that financial technology companies did not properly screen applicants for the giant Paycheck Protection Program. Fraudulent claims for unemployment benefits overwhelmed state computer systems, which sometimes had trouble identifying the fake ones while slowing down many legitimate filings.
Many of the scams relied on fake or stolen personal information.
Biden's plans aim to deal with prosecutions and prevention. He's asking for
And he's calling for policy changes to make sure that the Labor Department Inspector General's Office has ongoing access to data showing where the same identity was used to apply for benefits in multiple states. That office and other inspector general offices would share at least
Biden is also planning eventually to issue an executive order directing federal agencies on how to take action on identity fraud, including modernizing government systems to prevent identity theft.
A portion of the money would go to improve a
The proposal also notes that
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