COVID-inspired government handouts: Thieves left to wonder what's become of the profession
Money sure brings out the best in people, doesn’t it? At least it used to. Even scams typically required a degree of genius in an “Ocean’s Eleven” kind of way.
In 2003, Leonardo Notarbartolo masterminded the great $100 million diamond heist in Antwerp, penetrating 10 layers of security after 18 months of preparation and, among other things, disabling motion sensors with hairspray.
Train robberies had to be meticulously planned, bank heists required due diligence. Even the snake oil salesmen at least had to expend a serious amount of elbow grease. You think it’s easy taking a horse-drawn wagon from prairie town to prairie town and standing on an empty case of Fels-Naptha laundry soap to convince a gathering of unassuming locals that Dr. Caldwell’s Syrup Pepsin can cure a broken leg? You try it.
But during COVID, government relief funding was so ubiquitous that no one had to try real hard to steal it. You didn’t have to pick any locks or stick up a liquor store. In short, you didn’t have to earn it. All you had to do was fill out a form.
That was always the risk, wasn’t it? That it would dumb down our criminal element to seriously disappointing levels.
ProPublica reported last year that, by taking advantage of loosened unemployment rules, “A Bronx man allegedly received $1.5 million in just ten months. A California real estate broker raked in more than $500,000 within half a year. And a Nigerian government official is accused of pocketing over $350,000 in less than six weeks.”
What? After 25 years of trying, even the Nigerian guy finally scored? Oh mercy, what is becoming of us?
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One guy applied for unemployment benefits in 40 states — and 29 paid. In five states, the number of unemployment applications outnumbered the total number of workers. Even prison inmates who signed up for unemployment benefits were initially successful.
According to The New York Times, the government “sent money to 'farms' that turned out to be front yards. It paid people who were on the government’s 'Do Not Pay List.' It gave loans to 342 people who said their name was 'N/A.'"
And what was I doing all this time? I was sitting here writing these dopey columns, when by the looks of it I could have just written the feds to say “Hi, my name is Tim, please send cash.”
But it’s only funny if you don’t get caught, and sadly for an alleged Minnesota crime ring, the gumshoes tracked them down.
The group claimed to have provided 125 million meals to needy children; the amount of food they actually provided was, investigators said, “almost none.”
An outfit called Advance Youth Athletic Development collected $3.2 million in federal food aid, for supposedly cooking 5,000 meals every weeknight to feed hungry kids.
The Times wrote, “When a reporter recently visited the address listed for Advance Youth Athletic Development, there was no sign of a kitchen or a large child care facility. It was a second-story apartment.”
Well, just because they didn’t have a kitchen doesn’t mean anything. Maybe they used DoorDash. A lot of good work has come out of upstairs apartments; look at Dorothy Parker. But just to be sure, the reporter knocked on a neighboring door and asked a surprised guy if he recalled seeing 5,000 children a night visiting the apartment. I wish they’d thought to record that conversation.
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The Times reported that the scam reaped $240 million, and that the woman who ran the supposed watchdog group was in on the scam. But eventually the effort became so lackadaisical that even the government got wise. “Other defendants in the case seemed to put minimal effort into disguising what they were doing, using the website listofrandomnames.com to create a fake list of children they could charge for feeding,” the Times wrote.
Leonardo Notarbartolo must be wondering what’s become of the profession.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Scamming the government these days is just too easy, it seems
