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The Almighty Buck

How International Scam Artists Pulled off an Epic Theft of Covid Benefits (nbcnews.com) 60

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers and Nigerian scammers have used stolen identities to plunder tens of billions of dollars in pandemic aid, officials say. From a report: In June, the FBI got a warrant to hunt through the Google accounts of Abedemi Rufai, a Nigerian state government official. What they found, they said in a sworn affidavit, was all the ingredients for a "massive" cyberfraud on U.S. government benefits: stolen bank, credit card and tax information of Americans. Money transfers. And emails showing dozens of false unemployment claims in seven states that paid out $350,000. Rufai was arrested in May at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he prepared to fly first class back to Nigeria, according to court records. He is being held without bail in Washington state, where he has pleaded not guilty to five counts of wire fraud.

Rufai's case offers a small window into what law enforcement officials and private experts say is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated against the U.S., a significant part of it carried out by foreigners. Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers and Nigerian scammers have used stolen identities to plunder tens of billions of dollars in Covid benefits, spiriting the money overseas in a massive transfer of wealth from U.S. taxpayers, officials and experts say. And they say it is still happening. Among the ripest targets for the cybertheft have been jobless programs. The federal government cannot say for sure how much of the more than $900 billion in pandemic-related unemployment relief has been stolen, but credible estimates range from $87 million to $400 billion -- at least half of which went to foreign criminals, law enforcement officials say.
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How International Scam Artists Pulled off an Epic Theft of Covid Benefits More

How International Scam Artists Pulled off an Epic Theft of Covid Benefits

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  • credible estimates (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @02:40PM (#61698245) Journal

    credible estimates range from $87 million to $400 billion

    Estimates of that range can't all be credible. At least some of them are highly speculative.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
      ...And yet, honest, actual Americans can't hardly get through all the red tape trying to actually play by the "rules" and get their benefits, or they say you make just too much money, or will go after an elderly person that may have checked the wrong box and they are now trying to collect money they don't have.

      That's just unemployment..it gets worse even for the rent relief. The feds have $$$$ out there already allocated to help pay for those that soon will be evicted, but neither landlords or tenants can

      • Re: credible estimates (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Dynedain ( 141758 ) <slashdot2&anthonymclin,com> on Monday August 16, 2021 @04:11PM (#61698477) Homepage

        Almost none of it was directly paid by the Federal government. Instead the Federal government gave the money to States to distribute as they saw for. So if there is massive fraud here, your anger is better focused on the state politicians that put in place flawed rollouts.

        • Well this happened because of a prior perception that the federal government was easier to compromise due to a lack of local vested interests. I think now we can see that any local, state, or country-wide department made of disorganized idiots can be compromised easily by organized crime.

        • Almost none of it was directly paid by the Federal government. Instead the Federal government gave the money to States to distribute as they saw for. So if there is massive fraud here, your anger is better focused on the state politicians that put in place flawed rollouts.

          My lady still hasn't gotten any of her stimulus checks. The IRS is claiming her return is fraudulent (it isn't) and the phones are busy nonstop and the nearest office is four hours away. So frankly, fuck the fucking feds, and fuck the fucking fucks who defend them without knowing what they fuck they are talking about.

          • And which party systematically defunds the IRS?

            As part of the current "infrastructure" bills, there's a significant funding restoration for the IRS so they can do better - which in turn will raise revenue because they'll be able to crack down on tax fraud. One party is fighting hard against that idea.

            • The GOP has systematically defunded the IRS. I wasn't here to defend conservacucks, so your tone is inexplicable.

              • Usually the people who most lambast the Federal government (as in the tone from your comment that I was replying to) are conservatives. Nothing in your response indicated the opposite. You don't really have the moral high ground to get offended by tone after you already leveraged expletives.

      • ...And yet, honest, actual Americans can't hardly get through all the red tape

        Really? The last right wing talking point I heard was that it was so easy to get this that people are actively choosing unemployment instead of going and finding jobs.

        Which is it? It's like every right wing talking point is a quantum paradox, kind of like your Mexican Schrödinger's immigrants who somehow steal your jobs and mooch off unemployment benefits all at the same time.

        • Which is it?

          It is both. Some people have great difficulty. Others have no problem. It depends on their circumstances.

          I had payments denied because of my income level.

          My wife's business has contractors that received unemployment benefits despite continuing contract payments and not being "employed" in the first place. They were handed free money for no valid reason and with no reprecussions.

        • Many "professional poor", those who rely extensively on unemployment and housing assistance, have deferred seeking employment. For many with limited skills who did service labor, it was partly a safety choice. For many others, they've been caring for children who could not attend day care or school.

      • The point is to condition people in the belief that government can't be helpful. This way people stop participating in government. And thanks to that lack of participation a minority can seize control of the government. To a certain extent we're seeing that right now in Afghanistan, where the Taliban are clearly the minority but two decades of intense corruption have left people unwilling to fight for their government.

        • in Afghanistan, where the Taliban are clearly the minority

          The Taliban are from the Pashtun tribe, which is a majority of Afghans. The national government and army are mostly Tajiks and Hazaras, which are minorities.

      • I can vouch for the unemployment clusterfuck. Starting in March last year the state's unemployment website was down for a couple weeks, and the phone line was completely dead (wouldn't even ring) for months. Once you got your application in, if there was any issue with it - your former employer disputed a detail, or any reason they needed to speak with you whatsoever - tough luck. You can't speak to anyone.

        I actually got my application approved mere days before the rush, and I received benefits for a few mo

  • Shitbag's gotta shit.

    • I guess someone with modpoints was offended that I called people who take advantage of crises to steal money "shitbags."

  • Wow! (Score:3)

    by Maelwryth ( 982896 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @02:48PM (#61698277) Homepage Journal
    $87 million to 400 billion is such an amazing range of values that I doubt the estimates are credible. However, if true, it is an incredible theft and probably won't be confined to just pandemic relief. The first time I went to the U.S. I was amazed at how lax privacy was. I could look up someone's name and find their profession, family members, address, phone numbers, voting records, etc...It was insane.

    I wonder how many Russian gangsters bathed in swathes of Trump checks and blessed his name. :)

  • ... of domestic benefit fraud.

  • They will come. Also when you print it, require each claimant to come in and pick up a bank check in person with an ID. Hell forget the check just require a person with an ID to appear before depositing the money. Oh right. covid. excuses. excuses.

    Oh but that's inconvenient. Well too bad.

    • They will come. Also when you print it, require each claimant to come in and pick up a bank check in person with an ID. Hell forget the check just require a person with an ID to appear before depositing the money.

      Requiring an ID is "racist".

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

        They will come. Also when you print it, require each claimant to come in and pick up a bank check in person with an ID. Hell forget the check just require a person with an ID to appear before depositing the money. Requiring an ID is "racist".

        Only if you think any certain races are inherently unable to do something as simple and basic as go get a free government ID.

        • They give out free ID cards? Sweet, you have a link?

        • They're not free. The ID's almost all require fees, and proof of residency such as bills in your name and a lease agreement, along with social security cards and/or a birth certificate. Getting to the office during business hours, with all of that in hand, can be very difficult for someone who's not kept their birth certificate carefully filed away.

      • Requiring ID isn't racist. Not having sufficient govt offices & services in areas where poor people live (read poor, "under served" neighbourhoods) isn't racist. If you make getting govt ID an onerous task for any specific group of people & then require that ID to participate in society, that isn't necessarily racist.

        What is racist is the federal govt policy of "redlining" since the 1930s (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]), which in turn, leads to the adverse effects on particular ethnic groups

        • The wikipedia mostly talks about private business redlining not fed.govt. What redlining is the fed govt engaged in these days? How is requiring ID redlining in this context?

          • Redlining was federal govt policy implemented by the Federal Housing Administration (That's in the first paragraph of the history of redlining from Wikipedia). It was also coordinated consistently across the entire country. It's since been outlawed but many companies in the real estate sector still (quietly) practise it to this day. Even if they stopped tomorrow, the damage has already been done & can't be undone without substantial reparations. Requiring ID isn't redlining & I didn't say it was. Th

      • Just make them free and staff the goddamn post office or whoever issues them on Saturdays and Sundays. That's it.

    • They will come. Also when you print it, require each claimant to come in and pick up a bank check in person with an ID. Hell forget the check just require a person with an ID to appear before depositing the money. Oh right. covid. excuses. excuses.

      Hell, we can't even convince them to show an ID for voting....one of the most basic and important things we can do as citizens.

      We have more requirements to board a fucking airplane than to cash a govt check, get a check of vote.

  • $350,00 is hardly epic. DT used to spend that much tax money on a day trip to his golf club.

  • We put thieves and crooks in charge (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @03:19PM (#61698373)
    It's no surprise they were outsmarted by better thieves and crooks. This is what happens when we put the better showman in charge instead of competent administrators who are boring the watch at rallies.

  • This is small potatoes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday August 16, 2021 @03:24PM (#61698389)
    By all accounts Wall Street fat cats used the pandemic to pocket $3 - $5 trillion (with a t) Dollars. This was a combination of direct subsidies, financial subsidy programs ala "too big to fail", and buying up property on the cheap from desperate people who had to sell off their possessions to survive when they're livelihoods were destroyed by a global pandemic and the incompetent response by a certain administration.

    My personal favorite were the airlines who took billions and subsidies to not do layoffs, did the layoffs anyway, kept the money and are now complaining because the people they laid off went out and found other jobs and they're having a hard time getting them to come back. I'm sure they very much like to bring in a bunch of h-1b's.

    The point is we are easily distracted by relatively pointless things. Yeah it would be nice to not have all this fraud (never mind the administration that oversaw that fraud). But it's less than 1/100 what's been permanently extracted from the economy. And unless and until the money that was extracted is restored we're never going to go back to normal.

    • My personal favorite were the airlines who took billions and subsidies to not do layoffs, did the layoffs anyway, kept the money and are now complaining because the people they laid off went out and found other jobs and they're having a hard time getting them to come back.

      Is this the same airline industry where each of the players lost money to the tune of ~$7bn despite taking the subsidies and doing the layoffs?

      Well colour me fucking surprised that when a subsidy isn't enough that business doesn't work out all rainbows and roses.

      • I think it was American airlines, and if I remember correctly the profit was exactly equal to the subsidy. I'm not upset about the subsidy, I'm upset that the Trump administration handed out the subsidy with no strings attached. They simply should have been required to keep the employees on staff even if they were sitting around doing nothing. For the money should have been given directly to the employees when they were laid off. But I don't care about the government handing out money because one thing I've

        • You mean the American Airlines with a full year net LOSS of $8.9bn? That's some subsidy if the government is taking money away rather than giving it /sarcasm.

          They simply should have been required to keep the employees on staff even if they were sitting around doing nothing.

          Yeah, let's keep afloat by hopes and dreams. Hint: The subsidy existed not so some stewardess keeps her job. It existed so that post pandemic there is still an Airline that can take you places.

          Will you me or anyone below C-level see any of it

          Maybe put some more effort into understanding the purpose of a subsidy. Hint: It's got nothing to do with you me *or* C-levels seeing any of it.

  • I thought the articles might be about US billionaires who got furlough money for their yacht-crews in Belize.

  • In any emergency requiring the distribution of trillions of dollars the government would be essential and hire people to make that run smoothly. Instead they handed out money to anyone who had an SSN and that could fill out a questionnaire. Never mind that a few years ago the SSN of every person who ever applied for credit was stolen/leaked online making SSNs public information. Nearly every single person I know who remained working had a fraudulent claim for unemployment placed in their name that our compa
    • Happened to me. The funny part was I am a one person company, so they filed for employee me against employer me. And yes, whoever had my SS. It was printed on the form unemployment office sent me as the employer me. They got zip as I immediately contacted unemployment and they voided the claim.
  • New name for our government: SNAFU

  • I have about fifty employees, about half of them "filed" for unemployment. Even my dad who is semiretired filed. Lots of paperwork for me to report and clean up all the fraud. Just assume your SSN is completely pwn3d at this point.

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