I believe they're referring specifically to the Economic Impact Payments, since those had zero controls from most peoples' perspective. Money just showed up in your bank account.
I was. The government efficiently gave cash to almost everyone. That was pretty close to UBI. The biggest issue with direct payments were due to the way separated couples claim dependents.
UI, which I specifically mentioned, was a fraud carnival.
"At least" $35 billion in pandemic relief money
- $29 billion was in the Pandemic Protection Program
- $6.9 billion was in the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program
IRS has 975 tax and money laundering cases related to pandemic fraud with a total of $3.2 billion in alleged fraud. 236 already sentenced for avg. 37 months in prison. ~100% conviction rate.
From: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-105523.pdf "the lower bound of this fraud rate (7.6 percent) extrapolated to total spending across all Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs ... suggest over $60 billion in fraudulent UI payments."
- Cases of Proven Fraud: "currently $4.3 billion dollars of fraud based on formal determinations"
From: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104397 and https://www.asas.org/taking-stock/blog-post/taking-stock/202...
- Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) provided producers $31.0 billion for various commodities ... half of the producers that GAO reviewed did not provide full support for their payments. The payments are therefore potentially improper.
- USDA’s Business Center 2021 payment integrity review for CFAP estimated that CFAP had a significant improper payment rate for the fiscal year 2020 ... estimated that that $450M were improper.
You’re going to have to be more specific or offer some evidence, because a cursory search suggests there was massive fraud.
To take the least sensationalized source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-takes-acti...
They’re estimating more than half a billion dollars and are just getting started.