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.
