In the United States, fraudsters using criminal schemes have stolen about $ 100 billion from funds allocated by the US government to support the population and business during the coronavirus pandemic. On December 21, Roy Dotson, the coordinator of the US Secret Service for detecting crimes in this area, said in an interview with the Associated Press.
According to him, according to the service’s estimates, the amount of stolen funds amounted to approximately 3% of the $ 3.4 trillion that the country’s authorities sent to help citizens and businesses. Moreover, most of them account for the money allocated for the payment of unemployment benefits.
The US Department of Labor, in turn, announced the possible misuse of $ 87 billion from budget funds, the lion’s share of which ended up in the hands of attackers.
“The sheer size of this volume of funds already attracts criminals by default,” Dotson said.
It is known that to date, the US Secret Service has frozen $ 1.2 billion from the government financial aid package as part of checks on fraud in the areas of unemployment insurance and the issuance of loans. In total, to date, about 900 investigations are underway in all states, about 100 people have been arrested.
Earlier, on May 19, it was reported about scammers from the United States who, posing as Tesla founder Elon Musk on social networks, stole more than $ 2 million in cryptocurrency in six months. It was clarified that the attackers created fake Twitter accounts, where, on behalf of the businessman, they offered users to transfer tokens to their crypto wallets, promising a large reward for this.
Source: IZ
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
