{"id":64757,"date":"2026-07-22T18:18:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=64757"},"modified":"2026-07-22T18:18:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:18:42","slug":"getting-the-money-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=64757","title":{"rendered":"Getting The Money Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, Open The Books<\/a> posted an article about the fraud involving Covid payments and the efforts by the government to get back the money.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

COVID-19 programs to help families and businesses stay afloat inadvertently diverted hundreds of billions to scammers who spent thousands on wish-list items like luxury cars and plastic surgery.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The actual <\/em>amount of pandemic-related fraud, however, is unknown not only to us but also to the federal government. What\u2019s more, the amount that the federal government has recouped makes up a scant 0.47% of the government\u2019s <\/em>fraud guestimate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The difficulty of recouping these ill-gotten gains makes it even more critical that government programs are designed with far better guardrails in place. Scrutiny on the front end, even at some added investment, is imperative; the Covid era demonstrated that once money has left public coffers, it\u2019s incredibly challenging to recover all or even much of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…Congress authorized<\/a> about $4.6 trillion in emergency COVID-19 relief between 2020 and 2021 for vulnerable businesses and struggling families, but fraud was identified in at least 19 different pandemic-relief programs, according to an April 2025 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report<\/a>. If the government\u2019s $300 billion fraud calculation is correct, then 6.5% of all pandemic aid was incorrectly distributed. What we have compiled is just a fraction of the hundreds of charged cases and undetected schemes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The last update<\/a> from the Department of Justice regarding how much stolen COVID-19 relief funds were seized or forfeited \u2014 over $1.4 billion \u2014 was in April of 2024. While this is described more broadly as \u201cstolen COVID-19 relief funds\u201d by the DOJ, the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force classifies<\/a> the figure as Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) funds seized or forfeited. This means that the federal government has only recovered $10.55 per household. That leaves the remaining fraud tab nearly untouched.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The government may have had good intentions, but they messed up royally. Their efforts to help people they hurt by shutting down the government only provided avenues for dishonest people to get rich quick. The federal government is not the best vehicle for helping people in need. Local organizations have a much better idea of which needs are real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, Open The Books posted an article about the fraud involving Covid payments and the efforts by the government to get back the money. The article reports: COVID-19 programs to help families and businesses stay afloat inadvertently diverted hundreds … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19832,19831,10994,12499,19833],"class_list":["post-64757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-april-2025-government-accountability-office-gao-report","tag-covid-fraud","tag-department-of-justice-doj","tag-open-the-books","tag-pandemic-aid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64758,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64757\/revisions\/64758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}