Inspectors general need more authority to go after fraud in the COVID-19 relief programs, the independent committee overseeing federal pandemic relief spending said Tuesday.
The agencies watchdogs’ authority to administratively prosecute fraudsters is limited to fraud of $150,000 or less from COVID-19 relief programs and the Department of Justice is too busy for cases under $1 million- a gap that must be closed, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee said.
Michael Horowitz, head of the committee and the inspector general of the Department of Justice, said the $150,000 threshold is far too low given the scope of the fraud in programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. He’s asking Congress to modify provisions in the law on fraud committed against the federal government, to raise the maximum amount of a fraud claim that may be handled administratively to $1 million.
The request was highlighted in the committee’s semiannual report to Congress released Tuesday.
“It can’t be the case that people come away from this thinking there’s a certain level of fraud that’s just OK, or a certain level of improper payments that’s just OK,” Horowitz said in an interview with The Associated Press before the report was released. “We don’t believe that as IGs, and we want to get to the bottom of that. So it’s a very important tool and every dollar matters.”