More time to go after pandemic relief scammers is a good step

Most Americans were focused on protecting themselves and their loved ones, and staving off boredom and loneliness, during the height of the deadly pandemic.

Unfortunately, too many of their fellow Americans, here and all across the country, took the opportunity to make a quick buck by scamming to get money that Congress had allocated to alleviate the financial challenges tied to the unprecedented health crisis.

That includes, as readers might recall, the dozens of Cook County workers who either resigned or were fired as the result of a fraud probe here.

Nationwide, scammers stole more than $280 million in COVID-19 relief funding and at least $123 billion was wasted or misspent, according to a recent analysis by the Associated Press. That’s 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has distributed so far. Those figures, as well as the number of people — 2,230 — now facing criminal charges for their scams, are expected to grow as thousands of investigations into the schemes continue.

Because of the sheer scope of the crimes, President Joe Biden last August signed a pair of bills that now gives federal authorities 10 years, instead of the previous five, to prosecute those who fraudulently took money that was earmarked to help small businesses through the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program and Paycheck Protection Program, known as PPP.

Illinois is now following the same playbook, an encouraging sign given the scale of the theft that’s overwhelmed federal investigators. Gov. J.B. Pritzker is expected to sign a recently passed bill that extends the state’s statute of limitations to bring criminal charges in such crimes to 10 years. The bill also covers unemployment fraud that occurred during the pandemic, when the federal government expanded states’ ability to provide unemployment benefits.

The governor “believes that individuals who took advantage of a once-in-a generation global pandemic to prey upon those who most needed resources to survive should be held fully accountable,” a Pritzker spokesman said.

Being in close step with federal authorities is the right move, as officials continue sorting through the mess, finding more fraudsters and slapping them with charges.

Just two months ago, Chicagoans learned that six Chicago Park District officials had resigned and five other workers were facing discipline in conjunction with an ongoing internal investigation involving PPP fraud, WBEZ’s Dan Mihalopoulos and the Sun-Times’ Frank Main reported.

Just days before that news, Main reported that 48 employees of Cook County Clerk of Court Iris Martinez were fired or resigned after they were found to have defrauded the program.

And in January, an investigation by Main and the Sun-Times’ Lauren FitzPatrick found that clusters of pandemic loans went to single addresses in Chicago — including a men’s shelter on the West Side where checks for 69 PPP loans, worth a total of $1.4 million, were sent.

One head of a violence prevention program told Main and FitzPatrick that PPP fraud money was being used to buy guns, contributing to the proliferation of firearms during the pandemic.

Pulling off the scams was relatively easy because oversight of the programs was initially lax and applications weren’t as restrictive, opening the floodgates for callous opportunists taking advantage of the federal government’s desire to help people get through a crisis.

It didn’t take long to realize what was happening. A 2021 study by University of Texas researchers concluded the losses stemmed from a lack of vigorous verification of relief application and that “PPP saved relatively few jobs at an extremely high cost.”

Scammers not only stole from taxpayers, they made it exponentially harder to persuade reluctant members of Congress to vote for sweeping financial relief packages should there be another crisis.

Biden last year told the con artists they can’t hide. Illinois is saying the same.

Unfortunately, the damage has been done. Repairing it won’t be easy.

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