The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced recently the creation of three strike force teams to enhance its existing efforts to combat and prevent COVID-19-related fraud
“These Strike Force teams will build on the Department’s historic enforcement efforts to deter, detect, and disrupt pandemic fraud wherever it occurs,” US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a DOJ release. “Since the start of this pandemic, the Justice Department has seized over $1.2 billion in relief funds that criminals were attempting to steal, and charged over 1,500 defendants with crimes in federal districts across the country, but our work is far from over.”
In addition to criminal investigations, there have been civil investigations involving 1,800 individuals and entities for alleged misconduct in connection with pandemic relief loans totaling more than $6 billion. The three strike force teams will operate out of US Attorney’s offices in the Southern District of Florida, the District of Maryland, and in a joint effort between the Central and Eastern Districts of California.
AG Garland established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force in May 2021, to better coordinate resources between the DOJ and other “agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud.” The DOJ has worked closely with law enforcement partners to “analyze the extraordinary amount of data” from the states and the Small Business Administration, which administered several major...
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...