House Oversight Committee Targets Relief Fraud — ‘Greatest Theft of American Taxpayer Dollars in History’

Where did the taxpayer dollars go? House Republicans promise to answer that question Wednesday. That’s when they launch what they promise will be an unsparing oversight of President Joe Biden’s administration at the first examination of pandemic-era spending.

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability will be the vehicle. It is holding the opening public hearing in the new Congress on fraud and waste across federal pandemic spending.

Congress approved about $4.6 trillion in spending from six coronavirus relief laws, beginning in March 2020. Now the committee wants to see the receipts.

“We owe it to the American people to get to the bottom of the greatest theft of American taxpayer dollars in history,” said committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky).

More than 1,000 people have already pleaded guilty or have been convicted on federal charges of defrauding the myriad coronavirus relief programs Congress established in the early days of the pandemic.

Another 600-plus other people and entities face federal fraud charges and the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), a federal watchdog overseeing pandemic-era spending, has already found the U.S. government issued $5.4 billion in “potentially fraudulent pandemic loans,” according to a report released Monday.

PRAC identified 69,323 “questionable” Social Security Numbers in connection with the $5.4 billion in loans.

AP reports the Government Accountability Office is expected to tell the committee that number is certain to grow in the coming months.

For example, the inspector general for the Small Business Administration has more than 500 ongoing investigations involving loan programs designed to help businesses meet operating expenses during the pandemic, the AP report states.

The inspector general for the Labor Department continues to open at least 100 unemployment insurance fraud investigations each week.

“We must identify where this money went, how much ended up in the hands of fraudsters or ineligible participants, and what should be done to ensure it never happens again,” Comer promised ahead of the hearing, as Breitbart News reported.

Some 20 inspectors general work collaboratively to investigate pandemic relief spending. Michael Horowitz, who chairs a committee Congress created in March 2020 to lead oversight of coronavirus spending, is also scheduled to testify.

In his prepared remarks as seen by AP, Horowitz said the committee issued a fraud alert this week regarding the use of more than 69,000 questionable Social Security numbers to obtain $5.4 billion in pandemic loans and grants.

Also testifying is David Smith, an assistant director of the Office of Investigations at the U.S. Secret Service, who predicts efforts to recover stolen assets and hold criminals accountable for pandemic fraud will continue for years to come.

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