How bad was the scale of fraud — and the governmental incompetence that permitted it — during Covid? Unfortunately, prosecutors and federal officials are still tallying up the damage.
The House Oversight Committee recently released a report summarizing its own findings on the proliferation of pandemic scams. While other federal analyses have focused on the effects at the federal level, the committee report showed how incompetence at the state level, where unemployment benefits actually get administered, sowed the seeds for the Covid-era grifts.
Invitation to Criminals
The House investigation examined how numerous state decisions made identity fraud and other scams a near-certainty. For instance, the report references this nugget from a federal Justice Department press release announcing that a married couple had agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud charges:
According to court documents, Tiffany [Pacheco] was hired by the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) in April 2020, shortly after her release from federal prison following a conviction for aggravated identity theft. While employed by DUA, Tiffany allegedly misused her position to submit fraudulent [unemployment] claim information on behalf of herself and her husband, Arthur, who was incarcerated in Texas until September 4, 2020, and thus ineligible for [unemployment] funds. (Emphasis mine.)
The only natural response consists of one word: Really? One can read that paragraph over and over again to try to make sense of it — a government agency hiring someone just out of prison after a federal identity fraud conviction and placing her in
