BOISE, Idaho — Over the past 12 months, a team of prosecutors and agencies found more than $7 million in fraud in Idaho from COVID relief programs.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Idaho Josh Hurwit announced the formation of Idaho's COVID-19 Fraud Task Force one year ago. The task force was created to investigate cases of fraud related to pandemic-related programs, like the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
"We put together a team of prosecutors to work with our federal agency partners and law enforcement to root out and dig into the multiple examples of fraud that we were seeing already," Hurwit said. "To do it in a structured way to make sure that we could make a real impact, and recoup what amounts to stolen taxpayer money."
The task force is comprised of 11 federal agencies. Hurwit says they want to hold people accountable for illegally taking advantage of resources meant to help people and businesses through challenging times.
"For people to take advantage of really the pain that so many Americans went through - and take advantage of that to line their pockets with ill-gotten gains and stolen taxpayer money isn't only wrong and illegal - it's really offensive," Hurwit said. "So for us to be able to tackle this problem and hold those people accountable, and recover the stolen money from these relief programs."
Over its first year, the task force has criminally charged a dozen people and has gotten civil judgments against three people.
"Overall, about $7 million identified, that ultimately will come back to the taxpayers," Hurwit said.
One case that the task force recently prosecuted was Lawrence Sikutwa of Boise. According to court documents, he applied for three PPP loans using falsified business information to receive about $347,000 in fraudulent loan proceeds. On Monday, Sikutwa was sentenced to 30 months in prison for bank fraud and money laundering.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Idaho released information about several other cases the task force has prosecuted.
The task force has seen many different COVID relief programs get taken advantage of, including PPP loans, but also other programs like Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), Unemployment Insurance, and the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP).
Hurwit says the COVID-19 Fraud Task Force is just getting started.
"I think this task force is going to be going on for many years," Hurwit said. "And I expect that we'll be indicting and resolving a similar number of cases, at least this year if you look at 2024, and probably for several years thereafter."
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