(The Center Square) – Legislation that would give the U.S. Department of Justice more time to track down and punish pandemic-era unemployment insurance (UI) fraud is on its way to the U.S. House floor.
The Pandemic Unemployment Fraud Enforcement Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., provides a five-year extension on the statute of limitations for criminally prosecuting those who committed CARES Act related UI fraud.
According to the DOJ, there are still 157,000 open UI fraud complaints and 1,648 open investigations. If no congressional action is taken, the current statute will expire on March 27, leaving thousands of Americans unreimbursed for stolen benefits and potentially hundreds of fraudsters would be let off the hook.
“Given the volume of existing cases currently under investigation, there is no reason that Congress should not act to ensure law enforcement stays on this beat and goes after these criminals,” Smith told lawmakers. “If we don’t extend the statute of limitations, every one of these investigations will end and those that perpetrated the greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history will not be brought to justice.”
While the Government Accountability Office estimates that upwards of $100 billion in unemployment benefits were lost to fraud during the pandemic, only $5 billion have been recovered.
“Fraudsters ran rampant during COVID, taking advantage of states like California that had weak fraud protections in their unemployment insurance systems,” U.S. Rep. Rudy Yakym, R-Ind., a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said. “We can’t let them off the hook by letting the statute of limitations expire.”
Currently, more than 2,000 individuals have been charged with, and over 1,400 convicted of, unemployment insurance fraud since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The bill has 25 cosponsors, all Republican, and is part of the GOP’s efforts to address waste, fraud, and abuse connected to the federal government.
157,000 open UI fraud complaints and 1,648 open investigations, on illegal people, many of who, have already left the country and are still receiving their government checks overseas in a foreign environment of sanctuary from ever getting arrested, prosecuted or jailed. Just more redistribution of American wealth schemes, no longer confined to just the USA, but now on a worldwide scale, which is another reason for the birth of Making America great again, and the poor nations of the world incentivized to make their own countries great on their own, without an American mommy to sipe their diapers and milk up their bottles. The very concept of American SELF-government is continually killed in the cradles of social dependency, starting with one illegitimate adult diapered baby born at a time, first domestically, now on a worldwide scale.
More proof that the democrat party crime families took full fault advantage in their governing ability to never let a crisis go to waste to their own advantage, as even till this day the corrupted coffers of faux COVID social dependency programs keep getting filled, on previous renewable autopiloted taxpayer fleecing programs that refuse to die or just fade away on their own, like what should be happening to the criminals that created this mess. Hunt them down, jail and defund them all!
AND You can bet, NOT ONE DIME OF THAT will ever get clawed back.