Quote: WASHINGTON – During the last three years, the Justice Department’s COVID-19 Enforcement Task Force has charged more than 3,500 people with federal crimes, recovered more than $1.4 billion in stolen pandemic funds and reached more than 400 civil settlements and judgments, officials said Tuesday.
 
White House officials and lawmakers used the announcement as a springboard to propose legislation to provide more funding for anti-fraud enforcement, extend the statute of limitations on prosecuting crimes and improving government databases to better detect when payments shouldn't be made.
 
“We will continue our efforts to investigate and prosecute pandemic relief fraud and to recover the assets that have been stolen from American taxpayers,” Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters Tuesday.

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A sample of fraud investigations includes:

• Federal charges unveiled in September 2022 against 47 people accused of siphoning $250 million from a coronavirus pandemic relief program designed to provide meals for children, in “a brazen scheme of staggering proportions.”
  
• A sweep of suspects including doctors, marketers and manufacturers of fake vaccination cards in April 2022 resulted in charges against 21 people accused with $149 million in false billings and theft from government programs.
  
• Fifteen of the largest and hardest-hit states awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in sole-sourced, non-competitive awards went to vendors for items such as masks that have been accused of defrauding taxpayers, a USA TODAY investigation found.

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Anew report is highlighting how federal COVID funds were used in Washington state to give $1,000 checks to illegal immigrants who were ineligible to receive federal economic impact payments during the pandemic due to their immigration status.
 
The report, by the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), points to money administered by the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF), which was created by the American Rescue Plan Act and was intended to help state and local governments with their response and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Washington state received $4.4 billion in funding overall from that program.

Quote: Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chair of the Finance Committee, said another important provision would create a Social Security number verification system to thwart identity theft.
 
“This is really an epidemic," Wyden said. "Millions of Americans have been victims of identity theft."

Quote:While the Investigative Committee did not specify which terrorist attacks it suspects were funded by Western organizations, the announcement comes as top Russian officials double down on claims that Ukraine and the West were involved in the deadly Crocus City Hall attack last month.
The top law enforcement body named the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings as one of the implicated organizations. U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden served as a member of Burisma’s board of directors between 2014 and 2019.