How did fraudsters get away with $135 billion of pandemic relief aid? | ARC Seattle

as people were forced to stay home from work it was so critical for the US government to create programs to help people pay their bills there were several programs that helped people during that uncertain time but some of those programs also became a target for con artists I talked with an assistant us attorney about the fraud in federal programs that totaled billions of dollars all right so joining us here is Sydney changen with the US attorney's office and you're here to talk about Paradise Wi

lliams who was this person that was apparently behind this big theft case uh one of the biggest in the country um and just sentenced to 5 years right correct yeah and what what do we know about what she was accused of doing so Paradise Williams um she was living in Kent at the time when she started defrauding all of the different government pandemic Assistance programs throughout the pandemic um including um programs that are supposed to help small businesses like the paycheck Protection Program

the economic injury disaster Loan program um she also filed fraudulent claims for unemployment and then later in the pandemic um she defrauded the emergency rental assistance program of over $2.8 million and that um $2.8 million is the largest amount to date that we know of that's been stolen from the emergency veneral assistance program it's a lot of money it is a lot of money so what was she apparently using that money for um she based on the evidence we we gathered she used it not for rental

U her own rent necessarily um but she used it for expensive cars um designer Goods um she took luxury trips around the world to places like Dubai um and she also um used it I she did use it on rent but it was on luxury apartment complexes in Arizona that had things like Resort like living and things like that is there any other you know restitution any other actions that maybe she or some of the other codefendants have have had so she and the cense are and her codefendants who have pled guilty

have all been ordered to pay restitution she's responsible for the entire amount of 3.3 approximately $3.3 million um it's joint in severable in a couple different ways for you know everyone's responsible but she has a responsible total amount um the court has also ordered the um Lexus in Range Rover that she purchased with the criminal funds um to be seized so those have been seized as well I have to imagine that investigations like are quite complex right there's a lot of parts to them how do

they even start um they start in a lot of different ways sometimes they are anonymous tips that come in from the public um there are sometimes um flags from financial institutions and banks of suspicious transactions um and also sometimes even publicly reported information from you know the news so it's it's yeah there's a lot that goes into it right and I would imagine it it's probably a lot of time that goes into you're getting a lead about a particular case and then eventually you hope to get

a sentence right what kind of goes into that yeah um so I mean the our our cases tend to that we end up charging tend to require a lot of resources to bring them to to to the point where they're charged in in court um and in this particular case Paradise Williams's conduct was so broad um that at some point in the beginning we had multiple Federal investigations open against her because she was using a lot of different deceptive techniques um in different aliases and so it took us a little bit

of time to figure out oh this is actually all tied to the same person um and in this case it actually was FBI special agent um Katie Moran who is an 18-year veteran of the bureau and investigates some of the most complex White Collar cases in our district and she put together all of the pieces of the evidence to kind of pull all of the different frauds that she was committing into one um we reviewed um bank records um executed search warrants on Miss Williams's home on her computer on her um cel

l phones and piece together all of that Evans to to bring the charges and identify um her five codefendants who were amongst the most um um proactive and and um willing participants in in the scheme when we're talking about recovering money and and as you were pointing out there's a lot of money recovered in this particular case where does that money go once it's recovered um once it's recovered it's it it goes back to the government agency that administered the program and then they they alloca

te it accordingly okay and then how can someone who suspects you know fraud how do you even sort of stop start the process of of thinking that there might be some fraud out there and then reporting it to doj how do they report it to doj well for covid fraud we do have a national disaster um center hotline that um the public can call or they can submit anonymous tips online as well okay do you guys get a lot of tips we we do we do I have to imagine after the pandemic too there's probably been qui

te a few yes yes they're ongoing I mean I I think we all know a lot of um you know a lot of small businesses were really helped it was life like PPP was a Lifeline for them um at the same time um there's there's a lot of um suspicions Andor stories out and definitely people who took advantage of the system of that time and people hear about it for any number of reasons they are you know submitting in their their their tips and their what they've learned and anytime you have a suspicion it's impo

rtant to come forward don't hesitate on that correct it's kind of the advice right okay so you guys can look into it Cindy thank you very much for your time this morning thank you for having us nice to meet you