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Recent headlines state that $191 billion in pandemic unemployment insurance was lost to fraud. Not exactly. In this Department of Labor Office of Inspector General's Congressional Testimony, around $76 billion of that is classified as fraud. The rest of those funds are referred to as improper payments.

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) released Insights on Telehealth Use and Program Integrity Risks Across Selected Health Care Programs During the Pandemic, a report assessing telehealth utilization and fraud, waste, and abuse risks across six federal agencies during the first year of the pandemic.

Michael E. Horowitz, Chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), commended announcement from Larry D. Turner, the Inspector General for the Department of Labor (DOL), that his office has charged more than 1,000 individuals with Unemployment Insurance (UI) fraud since the beginning of the pandemic.

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) budget increased significantly in FY2020, due in large part to additional funding for programs created or augmented due to COVID-19. As the office responsible for overseeing these funds– $400 billion for 2020 – the DOL Office of Inspector General (DOL-OIG) created a Pandemic Rapid Response Team to combat fraud, waste, and abuse.

Two different pandemic response programs used self-certification by applicants as a primary requirement to determine eligibility and experienced increased fraud due to that requirement. The Small Business Administration (SBA) and Department of Labor (DOL) Offices of Inspectors General (OIG) found in recent reports that self-certification is a major fraud risk that cuts across program and agency boundaries.

A Hampton woman was sentenced today to five years in prison for identity theft and leading a conspiracy to defraud the government and financial institutions for pandemic-related loans and other benefits.