Brian M. Feldman, partner and chair of the firm’s Government and Internal Investigations practice group, was featured in the Washington Times in an article titled, “Scammers’ billions ripped off from pandemic assistance funds ‘tip of the iceberg.’” The article describes a range of crimes being charged as individuals and businesses have defrauded pandemic relief programs, such as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.
In the article, Brian comments, while there have been few False Claims Act cases so far, more will likely come in the future, thanks to the way the law is written, with ample time for whistle-blowers to raise their claims and for the government to investigate. On the criminal side, he commented that what’s been charged so far is mostly low-hanging fruit and that, while “[t]here are a lot of cases, . . . I’m confident it’s the tip of the iceberg. Whether the rest of the iceberg looks like the tip or not will be interesting to see.”
The Government and Internal Investigations practice group at HSE has been monitoring the rapidly changing regulatory, affirmative civil enforcement, and criminal enforcement environment arising from federal programs created in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Click here to view up-to-date enforcement actions and decisions on our COVID-19 Federal Aid Programs web page.
Please click here to read more on the Washington Times website.