How to dump billions $$$.

[Catsumi]

Hey, we can all learn to get rid of cash fast. Just watch how government does it. (Bold mine.)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-o ... -1.6241211

The federal government spent billions of dollars on income supports to help Canadians weather the pandemic — but it appears these emergency benefits inadvertently went to criminals as well.

According to a recently obtained financial intelligence report, criminals and organized crime appeared to have "knowingly and actively" defrauded the Canada emergency response benefit (CERB) and Canada emergency business account (CEBA) programs.

The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), the country's financial intelligence wing, observed that during the first few months of the CERB program, criminal organizations filed multiple applications using stolen identities.

Snipped

Launched in March, the CERB originally paid $2,000 a month to Canadians whose income took a hit due to the pandemic. The program paid out more than $74 billion before the government transitioned to paying Canadians through employment insurance.

Even businesses got in on the dirty deal:

A similar scheme was used by criminal organizations exploiting the Canada Emergency Business Account: applicants transferred the $40,000 subsidy from their business accounts to personal accounts and withdrew the money in cash.

Snipped



…..”that was bound to happen, because Ottawa has said quite explicitly that, you know, they're not really fussed about interrogating, whoever's applying, so it only stood to reason that some of the applicants would be fraudulent ."

Snipped

And so did criminal organizations:

Sometimes the benefit money appeared to be mixed in with laundered funds.

"Reporting entities indicated that criminal organizations, using stolen IDs and individuals recruited via social media, are operating 'CERB scams' in certain cities; prepaid cards are loaded with CERB benefits and other laundered funds," said the intelligence report.

The phrase "reporting entities" refers to casinos, accountants, agents of the Crown, Canadian banks and foreign banks in Canada, insurance and real estate brokers, sellers of precious stones and metals and others — all of which must report suspicious transactions to FINTRAC if there's reasonable grounds to believe they may be linked to money laundering or terrorist financing.

Snipped

The government knew as they were throwing money around, but didn’t care:

“here was a huge impetus to get the money out the door quickly, which I think for many Canadians will have been a lifesaver ... whether or not there were appropriate safeguards in place, well, I think criminals will often find workarounds for a lot of those anyway,"

The report also said payments were sent to people who appear to have been engaged in illegal or suspicious financial activity. FINTRAC said some clients received cheques despite not living in Canada and while appearing to live in "a jurisdiction of concern." Those are countries and areas that FINTRAC views as posing a higher money laundering or terrorist financing risk.

FINTRAC said that since the start of 2020, until Oct. 31 of this year, it received 30,095 suspicious transaction reports where COVID-related benefits were referenced, a small percentage of the overall reports. The majority of those 30,000 also dealt with human trafficking and drug offences.

Snipped



But who cares? Not the government as there’s always more money to shovel out the door.

[common_sense_guy]

Wow they paid out 75 billion in payments. I didn't know it was that much.
I wonder how many new hospitals and new employees 74 billion dollars could have bought Canada instead to deal with covid instead of shutting down the country to try and eliminate people getting it which never usually happens. We're all going to get it sooner or later it is an accepted outcome. Sure would have been nice to have a more robust Health Care system in place instead of paying out people money to stay at home .

[Catsumi]

I agree….just how many hospitals and staff could have been had if our wealth had not been so flammable by wastrels?

Would those funds have been better spent elsewhere that would have achieved some good for all?

74 BILLION…good gawd almighty! That is boxcars full of money whizzing by.

Could that have bought us p, just maybe a power station driven by a nuclear reactor? How many hospitals and when was the last time we had a new one in B.C.? I don’t know, but I DO know that swindlers, thieves and layabouts benefitted from this thoughtless cash windfall so that human trafficking, illegal substances and money laundering could continue without a hiccup.

What really burns my sleek and fluffy tail is that the money is gone, poof, vamoose…. no likelihood of retrieval. EVER.

The Government isn’t even going to TRY to get it back as it’s seen as the cost of doing business (read, cost of getting elected}

I despair.

[hobbyguy]

I agree….just how many hospitals and staff could have been had if our wealth had not been so flammable by wastrels?

Would those funds have been better spent elsewhere that would have achieved some good for all?

74 BILLION…good gawd almighty! That is boxcars full of money whizzing by.

Could that have bought us p, just maybe a power station driven by a nuclear reactor? How many hospitals and when was the last time we had a new one in B.C.? I don’t know, but I DO know that swindlers, thieves and layabouts benefitted from this thoughtless cash windfall so that human trafficking, illegal substances and money laundering could continue without a hiccup.

What really burns my sleek and fluffy tail is that the money is gone, poof, vamoose…. no likelihood of retrieval. EVER.

The Government isn’t even going to TRY to get it back as it’s seen as the cost of doing business (read, cost of getting elected}

I despair.

The problems with medical staff are more related to lack of supply than anything else.

Family doctors is a good example, where the percentage of grads that take family medicine is lower than the percentage of of retirees that are family physicians by a long shot. Plus more physicians are retiring that we graduate as a whole. Plus the aging population actually means we need more family physicians than before...

There aren't enough nurses to go around, and that is made worse by a shortage of spaces in nursing schools.

It isn't a matter of throwing money at health care. There are many systemic issues that need fixing.

AAnd I get it, the right wing would rather have had the economy go completely flat and people starve on the streets than have programs like CERB. Well, the majority of Canadians disagree. And yup, every country that did such programs, and that means almost all developed countries, had problems with a small % getting scammed by criminals. No government benefit program is ever scam proof. The good they do, however, far outweighs the amount of scamming.

[mikest2]

I agree….just how many hospitals and staff could have been had if our wealth had not been so flammable by wastrels?

Would those funds have been better spent elsewhere that would have achieved some good for all?

74 BILLION…good gawd almighty! That is boxcars full of money whizzing by.

Could that have bought us p, just maybe a power station driven by a nuclear reactor? How many hospitals and when was the last time we had a new one in B.C.? I don’t know, but I DO know that swindlers, thieves and layabouts benefitted from this thoughtless cash windfall so that human trafficking, illegal substances and money laundering could continue without a hiccup.

What really burns my sleek and fluffy tail is that the money is gone, poof, vamoose…. no likelihood of retrieval. EVER.

The Government isn’t even going to TRY to get it back as it’s seen as the cost of doing business (read, cost of getting elected}

I despair.

If you want to benefit from the criminal vote, you must cater to them. Let them rip us off, lower sentences, you know, the Liberal way.

[GordonH]

Curious about how much feds got back at income tax time, since there wasn’t any deductions on that $500 per/week.

Listening to some who collected many had a second job and reported there earnings and still got $500 from Feds. Of course they got hit hard at tax time.

[Catsumi]

Mikest2 wrote

“If you want to benefit from the criminal vote, you must cater to them. Let them rip us off, lower sentences, you know, the Liberal way.”
[/quote]


That’s just it though, isn’t it?

They KNOW the funds went to criminals and grifters that Fintrac is not going to pursue retrieving. There’s just so much money, gone for good and forever …. and it just isn’t worth the time and effort to recoup money handed out freely without checking in who was the receiver of the bounty.

It was FREE, FREE MONEY.

Then, finally, they tied the windfall funds to a mast that was somewhat solid [E.I.) but that was LONG after the bulk of it was snagged by the criminal element.

The honest taxpayer gets stuck with the bill along with a reduced standard of living as our wealth is pizzed away into the wind.

[Babba_not_Gump]

A friend of mine with a small business got a call one day last year from his accountant. He was told that the feds had a Covid loan for small businesses and that he should apply for it, but my friend said he didn't need the money.
The accountant told him to apply for it anyways.

I'm not positive amount the correct amount that was available for all small businesses, but believe it was $30,000.
And here's the catch:
1. no interest for three years.
2. only have to pay back $20,000 after three years. You get to keep the rest. It's yours. It's free.

So of course he went for it.

How many other businesses applied for this, and of course all of them will keep the $10,000.

Did a drama teacher think up this scheme?

[sobrohusfat]

How to scuttle the ship - one leak at a time.

There comes a point where it becomes obvious that none of it is by accident.



I am puzzled by this tho ...

How does a tail manage to be both sleek and fluffy at the same time ??

[crookedmember]

What's the cheat rate? 2% or something?

Wow. If only CCRA had some way of going after those bad people.

[crookedmember]

It's interesting that when the government spends money to help ordinary Canadians during a pandemic, our friends on the right and right are OUTRAGED AT THIS WASTE.

But when government spends $60 billion to give tax cuts to Canada's richest corporations, like He Who Shall Not Be Named did, not a peep is heard from them.

Sounds to me like our friends are a little bit misguided.

[Sparki55]

It's interesting that when the government spends money to help ordinary Canadians during a pandemic, our friends on the right and right are OUTRAGED AT THIS WASTE.

But when government spends $60 billion to give tax cuts to Canada's richest corporations, like He Who Shall Not Be Named did, not a peep is heard from them.

Sounds to me like our friends are a little bit misguided.

So the conservative government gives out $8.5 billion a year in tax credits to businesses across Canada for 7 years, creates 900,000 jobs, and you want to compare that to giving millions of dollars to criminals...

No wonder we are in this mess.

[fluffy]

...and you want to compare that to giving millions of dollars to criminals...

I wasn't aware that they'd released a dollar amount yet. The opening line in the article linked to in the OP read:

"FINTRAC not sure total amount of CERB/CEBA funds may have gone to organized crime"

[hobbyguy]

What's the cheat rate? 2% or something?

Wow. If only CCRA had some way of going after those bad people.

The initial audit showed a low cheat rate - $42 million lost to 30,000 fraudulent claims. That's a pretty low % of te total $$$ spent, however, that was a quick preliminary audit that likely only caught the unsophisticated. https://westernstandardonline.com/2021/ ... erb-fraud/

To do a proper audit is estimated to take roughly 4 years. I would not be surprised to see than number rise by a factor of 10 or 20. So roughly $400-800 million - or about a 1/2 to 1% - but it could be more, that's just a guess.

Reality is we will never really know as things got a bit confused due to the rush roll out of the program. The government could never take the option of doing nothing, and in the normal course of events such a large program would have taken the bureaucracy a year or more to roll out in an organized fashion. So it went out "loosey goosey" knowing that there would be some fraud, rather than leave everyday Canadians in the lurch.

EI doles out about $20 billion per year, and the fraud found was $177 million in 2018 for a "cheat rate" of .9%. About 70% of that fraud money is recovered. It would be logical to expect that we will see a similar "cheat rate" for CERB, and likely a lower recovery rate.

[crookedmember]

Sadly, our friends on the right and right seem to think the economy exists in a vacuum. They believe that if the government had not supported the economy and let businesses collapse and people lose their homes, this would not have come at a huge cost also.

We were indeed lucky in the early days of the pandemic to have a government that listens to economists, rather than an orange ---hole who listened to his morbidly obese gut.

We had a far lower death rate and a far faster recovery than the US for a reason.


Economic update: U.S. job recovery slows, Canadian employment bounces back

But there are still 5 million fewer jobs [in the US] right now than there were before the Pandemic, so they still have a bit of work left to be done. That contrasts interestingly with Canada, by the way. In Canada's case, first of all, it was just a better job number. It was 157,000 jobs, and of course, that's fewer new jobs but it's ten times a smaller population. It's quite a gain, actually. It was a pretty high quality one, full time, mostly, and of course, Canada's unemployment is down as well, and so on. But maybe the headline bit of news is that Canadian employment is now higher than it was before the pandemic. U.S. is still five million jobs short of that goal; Canada is already there.

-RBC Global Asset Management, October 2021