‘Fast money equals fast crime’: Fraud recovery sleuths share lessons of stolen COVID relief funds

Small Business Administration, state unemployment systems simply “weren’t ready to vet” applicants fully, said National Pandemic Fraud Recovery Coordinator Roy Dotson

Fraud recovery experts at the FBI and Secret Service detailed the challenges facing law enforcement in recouping tens of billions of dollars in stolen taxpayer funds since the federal government began disbursing record sums in record time for emergency pandemic relief in March 2020.

“I’ve never seen anything of this magnitude,” said National Pandemic Fraud Recovery Coordinator Roy Dotson, who has 30 years experience in law enforcement, during a discussion on combating fraud organized by the Bethesda Chapter of AFCEA. “It was an online application so pretty simple. You could look up whatever information you wanted or use other people’s identification, PII [Personal Identifiable Information], and put that in, and the money just flowed to whatever accounts you wanted it to.”

The lesson? “I’ve learned that fast money equals fast crime,” said Dotson.

The unprecedented amount of money that Congress has spent on stimulus programs has attracted domestic and international fraudsters looking to game the system.

“Congress wanted to do the right thing helping out those that were hurting from COVID-19 and wanted to get that money to them quickly, whether that was, unemployment or a Small Business Administration [Paycheck Protection Program] loan,” said Dotson, who works at the Secret Service, in an interview after the discussion.

“With that said, the system has never had to put out this kind of money,” he told Just the News. “You know, Department of Labor, SBA, they’re small agencies, they really are. And their systems just weren’t ready to vet them properly.”

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