NYT: US government made it ‘shockingly easy’ to commit pandemic fraud

“The COVID stimulus spending was one of the greatest scams in history & we’ll be paying for it for decades to come. Libertarians like ⁦@RepThomasMassie⁩ were the canaries in the coal mine who warned about this from the beginning.” ⁦@HannahDCox⁩ https://t.co/98cg85tcsv

— Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) October 6, 2022

BASEDPolitics' Hannah Cox writes, "In an episode of their podcast 'The Daily' this week, The New York Times said that, 'when it comes to pandemic aid, the United States government made it shockingly easy to commit fraud.”

"The admittance comes on the tail of a grand jury recently indicting dozens of people in Minnesota for stealing almost a quarter of a billion dollars (yes, billion) from COVID relief programs," Cox wrote. "But this incident is really only the tip of the iceberg it seems."

She continued, "On the podcast, Times reporter David Fahrenthold said, 'When you write about the fraud that happened against pandemic programs starting in 2020, it’s hard to think of any other episode in at least recent American history where so many people stole so much from the US government or so many people — just make it more broad, so many people broke federal law all at the same time.”

Cox observed, "Ultimately over 5 trillion was spent on COVID relief programs, and the dollars went in a lot of directions. But the Times says three programs were the most vulnerable to fraud: the federal unemployment benefits program, the Paycheck Protection Program, and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program."

"The truth is we still have no idea just how much fraud occurred under these programs," she noted. "Many of them used an honor system at the time that merely required people to declare under perjury they had been harmed by COVID and the lockdowns."

Read the entire column.