Introduction
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has committed to aggressively investigate and prosecute COVID-19-related fraud schemes, particularly those involving government funding programs created or broadened during the pandemic. Several of these programs, including the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), the Provider Relief Fund, the Federal Child Nutrition Program (FCNP), and others, paid out hundreds of millions of dollars during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the federal government's COVID-19 response, some of these programs loosened their eligibility requirements. Since then, DOJ and various other federal agencies have uncovered what they claim to be rampant fraud in connection with the dispersal of the vast sums of federal dollars through many of these programs. Although there have not yet been many federal prosecutions or enforcement actions related to some of these COVID-19 relief programs, DOJ's recent actions indicate that the federal government remains determined to both recover fraudulently obtained funds through civil actions and to punish those involved through criminal prosecutions.
With all signs pointing to an imminent and noticeable uptick in federal COVID-19-related fraud investigations (and eventually prosecutions), clients should be advised that DOJ and the U.S. attorneys' offices (USAOs) operating within DOJ will likely target not just the individuals responsible for fraudulent submissions, but also companies that obtained...
Vadodara/Surat. A special CBI court has convicted four individuals in a 23-year-old fire insurance fraud case in Gujarat and sentenced each of them to three years of rigorous imprisonment. The cou...