{"id":23432,"date":"2022-09-21T14:49:17","date_gmt":"2022-09-21T18:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=23432"},"modified":"2022-09-21T14:49:17","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T18:49:17","slug":"us-charges-dozens-with-250m-pandemic-relief-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/09\/21\/us-charges-dozens-with-250m-pandemic-relief-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"US charges dozens with $250m pandemic relief fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US prosecutors have charged 47 people in the largest Covid relief fraud scheme alleged to date.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The suspects are accused of stealing $250m (\u00a3220m) from a government aid programme that was supposed to feed children in need during the pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They allegedly spent the spoils on properties, cars and luxury goods.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A Minnesota non-profit organisation, Feeding Our Future, is accused of orchestrating the plot. Founder Aimee Bock denies any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A lawyer for Ms Bock told the BBC: “We have maintained our innocence from the first day.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He said the indictment was “merely the beginning of the criminal process” and represented a “mere allegation”.<\/p>\n

FBI Director Christopher Wray said this “egregious plot” was the largest of its kind uncovered so far.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The suspects are alleged to have issued bills for meals they did not serve to children who did not exist, said the Department of Justice (DoJ) in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They allegedly did so by exploiting a government initiative through which private restaurants could claim funding to distribute food under the sponsorship of non-profit organisations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The defendants are said to have bribed employees of Feeding Our Future to sponsor numerous sham distribution sites.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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These sites claimed to be serving meals to thousands of children a day within just days or weeks of being formed, according to the DoJ.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But they were instead submitting false paperwork using bogus children’s names, some of which were taken from a website, www.listofrandomnames.com.<\/p>\n

The group used the proceeds to buy luxury cars, as well as property in the US, Kenya and Turkey, and to fund international travel, the DoJ said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The alleged fraudsters face charges including wire fraud, money laundering and bribery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the DoJ would continue to crack down on those who had “exploited the pandemic for personal gain”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In March, the DoJ said it had brought over 1,000 criminal cases involving losses of $1.1bn – and was involved in civil litigation alleging fraud in more than $6bn of loans.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US prosecutors have charged 47 people in the largest Covid relief fraud scheme alleged to date. The suspects are accused of stealing $250m (\u00a3220m) from a government aid programme that was supposed to feed children […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[7081,7083,1172,8782,305,6152,4974],"class_list":{"0":"post-23432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-coronavirus","10":"tag-covid-19","11":"tag-fbi","12":"tag-feeding-our-future","13":"tag-fraud","14":"tag-minnesota","15":"tag-us-department-of-justice","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23435,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23432\/revisions\/23435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}