Arizona has become a battleground against the so-called “crime of the century,” as the state confronts the daunting task of recovering funds from pandemic-related unemployment fraud, as per a report by FOX 10 Phoenix. The Arizona Department of Economic Security (DES) has recovered a significant sum, approximately $1.83 billion of the estimated $5.8 billion that slipped into the pockets of swindlers—and in a context where nationwide, the recovery rate hovers in the single digits, Arizona stands out with close to a 30 percent recovery rate. The state has also convicted 900 individuals with hundreds more awaiting prosecution, even as the federal statute of limitations on pandemic unemployment fraud expired last month.
This concerted effort by Arizona comes amid a push by the Ways and Means Committee to extend the statute of limitations for the recovery and prosecution of these funds; the committee has passed a slew of bills to protect taxpayer rights and facilitate the retrieval of stolen money—bills which are unambiguously crucial given estimates from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that place the missing funds between $100 to $135 billion, with only $5 billion recovered to date, according to an announcement by the committee; other estimates, even more alarming, point to upwards of $400 billion lost to fraudulent activities but what’s concerning is time is slipping away, as Committee Chairman Jason Smith warned, “The statute of limitations for these investigations runs out in 43 days on March 27. If we don’t extend the statute of limitations those that perpetrated the greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history will not be brought to justice.”
On a more granular level, the Ways and Means Committee has also introduced measures to streamline tax filing and protect taxpayers from the effects of check fraud by requiring the IRS to create a direct deposit system for replacing stolen checks, among others. One of these is the Pandemic Unemployment Fraud Enforcement Act, which aims to extend the statute of limitations for CARES Act-related unemployment insurance fraud to 10 years, ensuring ample time for law enforcement to address open cases and initiate new ones to hold fraudsters accountable, as per the committee’s legislation overview. This move mirrors similar actions taken by Congress in 2022 to extend the statute of limitations for fraud related to other pandemic relief programs…