How Many People Have Been Charged With Fraud?

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About 1,500 people have been charged with fraud so far. "It's such a tiny fraction of the actual crimes that seem to be out there waiting to be investigated," he says. The floor is somewhere between one and six billion; what's the ceiling? $163 billion potentially in fraud in the Department of Labor from unemployment fraud,. maybe over $100 billion worth of fraud in small business loan programs.

As the coronavirus pandemic disrupted business in the US, the government sent billions of dollars to people and businesses that were affected. That led to an epidemic of financial scams.

This episode was produced by Jon Ehrens, fact-checked by Serena Solin and Tori Dominguez, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and edited by Matt Collette and Noel King, who also hosted.

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