Thieves feasted on COVID relief; let's be vigilant

Now that the pandemic has been declared "over," many observers have begun to grade how well governments performed. One area that deserves attention is the billions of dollars fraudulently diverted from COVID-19 assistance programs intended to support those in need.

In response to the pandemic, the federal government created stimulus packages that threw billions of taxpayer dollars at the problem. On many fronts, the effort was a success. The economy did not collapse. For the most part, those in need received some level of support, and our society as we know it did not break down. So they got the basics right.

However, one colossal failure was the shocking amount that criminals were able to steal from the various programs. The Department of Labor recently estimated that approximately $46billion was distributed in fraudulent pandemic unemployment insurance benefits.

Fraud on unprecedented scale

We will never know the total amount stolen. California has said that the state experienced more than $60billion in fraud. The White House has estimated that $80billion was lost nationwide. The Secret Service says it is about $100billion.

The federal government recently appointed a national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator, agent Roy Dotson, who told CNBC, "I've been in law enforcement for over 29 years and worked some complex fraud investigations for 20 plus years, and I've never seen something at this scale."

No matter which way you slice the bill, the reality is that it's an incredible amount of money lost to fraud.

For our purposes, let's stick to the most conservative estimate that went to criminals and organized crime: $46billion.

So how did it happen? The Department of Labor states that criminals filed for unemployment in multiple states, filed on behalf of deceased persons, filed with suspicious email accounts and filed using the identification of federal prisoners.

Because it is a "white collar" crime of "government" dollars, people may be tempted to think that no one was hurt. Try telling that to the people who depend on the system to feed their families. Or tell that to those who had to wait to get their funds because the crooks had choked the system with false claims. Or the hundreds of thousands who had their identities stolen and had to take time off work to try to regain their identity.

The $46 billion also needs to be put in context. It's more than six times the amount the federal government invests in cancer research. And it's over four times the budget of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We allowed the crooks to steal more than four times the amount we fund the good guys to catch them.

And the $46 billion they stole isn't all going toward flashy cars – a lot of it is being used to fund what many consider real crime – such as guns and drugs.

Three concerns need to be called out: Taxpayer money went to criminals. This level of fraud compromises the integrity of our social assistance programs. And governments may fail to learn about how to better prevent fraud in the future.

But it is unlikely that we can say the same about the criminals. They learned how easy it is to steal from governments, how unlikely it is they will get caught and how lax the penalties are if they are caught.

Tighten security measures

Why not insist that our social insurance programs adopt the same security measures as our banks, including requiring recipients to verify their identity, place of residence and income, and requiring agencies to report suspicious activity to a central body. Imagine if we treated access to government funds the same way we guard access to our personal funds?

Social assistance fraud is cyclical and opportunistic. We saw a huge spike after Hurricane Katrina and now another spike during the COVID-19 pandemic. But be assured, there is always another spike around the corner. Now is the time to put in place the safeguards taxpayers deserve.

We need to modernize our systems, install the appropriate checks and balances, break down the artificial barriers that allow criminals to migrate their theft from program to program, from state to state, stealing funds at each stop along the way with no alarm bells sounding.

The question is: Who will take action to prevent the next fleecing of America? It has to be at the federal level with regulatory and policy changes and federal funding flowing to states to implement the enhanced technology and processes to ensure real long-term change.

America's latest disaster, Hurricane Ian, left tremendous destruction in its wake. The fraudsters and criminals must be already planning on how to get a cut of the federal and state benefits that will follow.

Amanda D'Amico is vice president of Risk and Fraud Strategy & Operations at Thomson Reuters.