Scale of Pandemic Relief Fraud Grows Larger
There’s no question that billions of dollars in pandemic relief aid was stolen by fraudsters in 2020. Here’s a quick tally of the estimates of how many billions were stolen:
- $400 billion in fraudulent unemployment benefits processed by the Department of Labor.
- $200 billion in Economic Injury Disaster Loans and the Paycheck Protection Program administered by the Small Business Administration.
- $138 billion in fraudulent tax credits processed by the IRS.
Combined, that’s $738 billion in fraudulent payments made by U.S. government agencies to fraudsters. No matter how you slice it, that’s a very big number.
But that’s an underestimate
Testifying before Congress on February 6, 2025, Haywood Talcove, the CEO of Lexis Nexis Risk Solution, puts the total amount of Covid relief lost to fraud much higher. According to Talcove, the total U.S. taxpayer loss to fraud is at least $1 trillion. Worse, most of that money left the United States. Even worse still, the U.S. government’s own payment systems were “accomplices” in the fraud:
Outdated government systems permit criminals to access unlimited sums of money. During the pandemic, they stole $1 trillion dollars, 70 percent of those dollars went overseas. Shockingly, it’s just not criminals exploiting the system, it’s the flawed system itself acting as the accomplice. If left unchecked, the U.S. government will continue to lead the world in funding cyber criminals.
After almost five years, just $4 billion of pandemic relief aid has been recovered. Recovering funds lost to fraud has not been a priority of the officials and bureaucrats who have been running the U.S. government.
