The U.S. Secret Service recuperated $286 million in fraudulently obtained pandemic aid loans to the Small Business Administration, the agency announced Friday.

The fundsw were sent back to the SBA and were obtained via the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program using both fabricated information and stolen identities.

The suspects used Green Dot Bank, a fintech institution, to hold and transfer the fraudulent funds. More than 15,000 accounts were used in the conspiracy, by individuals in the U.S. as well as domestic and transnational organized crime rings, the agency said.

“Fraudsters in general are always looking for ways and techniques to better do their crimes and modern conveniences are just one of those things they use. So currently, cryptocurrency is a big thing, fintechs, third party payment systems. But there’s not an institution, even our traditional financial institutions, that weren’t targeted during the pandemic,” Assistant Special Agent in Charge Roy Dotson, lead investigator for the Secret Service, told CNBC in an interview.

Investigations pointed out that fraudulent accounts at Green Dot were created using stolen identities and by relying on  “willing and unwilling money mules,” Dotson said.

Over the past two years, the Secret Service said it has seized over $1.4 billion in fraudulently obtained funds and assisted in returning some $2.3 billion to state unemployment insurance programs. Nearly 4,000 pandemic-related fraud investigations and inquiries have been initiated by the Secret Service. More than 150 field offices and 40 cyber task forces are involved.

“This is not going to be a quick fix. As we talked about today, 15,325 accounts at one financial institution —this is one case, so you can just think of the potential number of suspects and how many investigations that could come out of those. And with all of our federal, state and local partners, working this and having the same mission. It’s going to be a long process,” Dotson said at a news conference announcing the returned funds.