
Nearly $100 billion stolen from COVID-19 relief programs, Secret Service says
CBSN
A minimum of nearly $100 billion has been stolen from government COVID-19 relief programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic, according to the U.S. Secret Service.
The estimate is based on Secret Service cases and data from the Labor Department and the Small Business Administration, said Roy Dotson, the agency's national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator, in an interview. The Secret Service didn't include COVID-19 fraud cases prosecuted by the Justice Department.

In the past year, over 135 million passengers traveled to the U.S. from other countries. To infectious disease experts, that represents 135 million chances for an outbreak to begin. To identify and stop the next potential pandemic, government disease detectives have been discreetly searching for viral pathogens in wastewater from airplanes. Experts are worried that these efforts may not be enough.