Fraudsters have stolen about a billion dollars from a fund to help unemployed people in the US state of California, Politico newspaper writes.
Tens of thousands of prisoners were involved in the theft, the newspaper reports. About 35,000 convicts have applied for assistance due to job loss. At least 20 thousand of such applications were satisfied. Sacramento County Attorney Ann Schubertg called the scale of the theft “overwhelming.” She said it was the largest taxpayer fraud in California history.
Currently, several criminal cases have been initiated, but part of the money has already been withdrawn from the country, there is no chance of returning it to the treasury, the prosecutor notes. Fraudsters in the United States and elsewhere could have stolen only about $ 8 billion from funds allocated to help the unemployed.
In September, the UK government lost up to 3.5 billion pounds sterling ( $ 4.6 billion) by mistake or fraud under the payroll subsidy program.