DOJ names chief prosecutor for pandemic fraud task force
The appointment of Associate Deputy Attorney General Kevin Chambers comes as the Biden administration tracks down those who stole billions in Covid-related aid.
The Justice Department announced on Thursday that it was tapping Associate Deputy Attorney General Kevin Chambers to lead the department’s pandemic fraud efforts.
In a news release, the department said Chambers would focus on “large-scale criminal enterprises” and “foreign actors” who tried to profit off Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic. Chambers will establish “Strike Teams,” as the Justice Department redoubles its work to combat pandemic fraud. The department has already uncovered alleged fraud involving more than $8 billion in federal aid, hitting nearly every key component of the roughly $6 trillion in emergency coronavirus spending Congress passed to aid families, workers and businesses.
The announcement comes after President Joe Biden teased the new role during last week’s State of the Union address, in which he said his administration had “welcomed back” the “watchdogs,” who he said would continue to track down criminals who stole billions in pandemic aid.
“We are going to go after the criminals who stole billions of relief money meant for small businesses and millions of Americans,” Biden said during his March 1 address. “I am announcing the Justice Department will name a chief prosecutor for pandemic fraud.”
Biden praised the department for moving “swiftly” to fill the role and said he was modeling the approach after his work as vice president, when then-President Barack Obama asked him to oversee the Recovery Act in 2009.
“With a Chief Pandemic Prosecutor now in place, the Department of Justice will escalate our efforts to crack down on bad actors — and take all efforts to seize relief money stolen from American families, businesses, and schools during the last Administration and deliver it back to the American people,” Biden said in a statement on Thursday.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the multi-agency task force last May. The task force has already moved forward with multiple cases and investigations, looking into fraud with the Paycheck Protection Program, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, unemployment insurance programs and other Covid health care-related fraud, the news release said.
For example, through the department’s work on cases involving PPP and EIDL fraud, 500 defendants have been charged in over 340 cases, the release said. These cases amounted to more than $700 million in alleged intended losses.
The chief prosecutor role will expand the task force’s efforts, according to the announcement, particularly through the Strike Teams that Chambers will coordinate.
“We are receiving an extraordinary amount of data from our state workforce agency partners,” Chambers said in a statement. “This data holds the key to identifying and prosecuting certain types of fraud, including unemployment insurance fraud. Our Strike Teams will enhance the department’s existing efforts and will include analysts and data scientists to review data, agents to investigate the cases, and prosecutors and trial attorneys to bring charges and try the cases. Again, this is on top of the great work our folks in the field are already doing.”