Five Overlooked Developments That Foretell the Future of Global COVID Fraud Enforcement

Talk of repeat rounds of massive government stimulus programs are dominating the headlines in the US and Europe. Enforcement agencies have openly discussed the high degree of fraud risk related to these programs, as well as their intention to aggressively pursue bad actors. However, to this point these agencies have been less forthcoming about how they intend to prioritize and implement this crackdown.

In this Article, FRA Founding Partner Toby Duthie and Associate Director Matthew Bedan discuss five recent developments, most of which have gone largely unnoticed, which give interesting clues as to how governments will go about post-COVID fraud enforcement agendas.

Five overlooked developments:

1. US v Stavely: The DOJ is serious about inter-agency cooperation to crack down on stimulus fraud
2. Furlough fraud is likely rampant in the EU
3. US v Zhang: Front-end data analytics controls are being used on stimulus applications to detect fraud and build criminal cases
4. DOJ Bank Fraud Subpoenas: Banks may not be held harmless after all for stimulus fraud
5. OLAF is busier than ever: A precursor to wider European enforcement

Read the full article here

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