LETTER: COVID relief and massive fraud
On Dec. 23, The Associated Press reported that the White House downplayed a statement by the U.S. Secret Service that “nearly $100 billion at minimum has been stolen from COVID-19 relief programs set-up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. “ While the Secret Service has arrested and prosecuted violators, the results of their efforts are miniscule ($3.5 billion) showing that there is a high percentage of success when committing financial fraud against the United States.
Our country is blessed with outstanding information technology companies. They utilize state-of-the-art hardware and software to streamline efficiency and prevent unauthorized transactions from being commonplace. Online retailers such as Amazon effectively and efficiently process hundreds of thousands of transactions daily. Sadly it appears that federal government systems lack the ability to protect our money.
Most of us remember the horrific rollout of the Obamacare website, a tragic case of the federal government failing to understand the complexity of the software and lacking personnel with the experience to roll out such a complex system. On top of that, the White House refused to hear about problems. Isn’t it time for our legislators to address the federal government’s ineptness in systems development and management and use the expertise of state-of-the-art American software and hardware companies?