Posted on 10/07/2023 4:55:17 AM PDT by Salman
In Chicago, the price of illegal guns soared during the pandemic, but gangs were able to pay for them with COVID-19 relief money obtained fraudulently, agents say.
When COVID-19 struck in 2020, the government quickly put together massive aid programs to help struggling businesses, along with the people who lost their jobs.
But other kinds of enterprises with names like the Traveling Vice Lords and the Wild 100s — criminal street gangs in Chicago and across the country — soon figured out how to take advantage of that safety net. They defrauded those programs of millions of dollars that they used to buy guns and drugs, according to the U.S. Justice Department and court records.
Incarcerated crooks were in on the act, too. The government estimates that, across the country, at least one-quarter of a billion dollars in fraudulent unemployment insurance benefits went to inmates in federal prisons.
It was no secret how to cheat the system. Tennessee rapper Nuke Bizzle got six years in prison after admitting he pocketed more than $700,000 in bogus COVID-19 unemployment insurance benefits. He glorified the scams in a YouTube music video that got almost 290,000 views.
“You gotta sell cocaine. I just file a claim,” the 34-year-old rapper, whose real name is Fontrell Baines, brags on the video.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at chicago.suntimes.com ...
Still, safe and effective.
I am shocked, shocked I tell ya.
One story of many about the billions of dollars paid out to scammers and others by our incompetent government.
And yet not one government official or bureaucrat has been held accountable for their part in these give-aways of taxpayer money.
Anytime the government helps the opposite happens but they never learn.
Isn’t it interesting how the government never accepts any culpability for mismanaging our money?
....”In Chicago, the price of illegal guns soared during the pandemic, but gangs were able to pay for them with COVID-19 relief money obtained fraudulently,.....”
well,Hell’s bells,the answer to all that is to take away all of the guns owned by honest, responsible, law-abiding citizens, I tell ya.......BTW,for what it is worth, there is really no such thing as an “illegal gun”...yes, these guns are stolen and sold back and forth which is all illegal, but the guns themselves are not “illegal” per se ......
BTTT
Another Democrat success story
Butt, butt, butt.....universal background checks and stuff. Oh, duh. Indiana gun shows. How could I have forgotten? 100k+ ODs, 7+ million unknown invaders but, assault weapons are the problem? 🖕
California was giving away Covid relief funds to all kinds of unqualified recipients — even to prisoners. Noone has been held accountable.
Not to worry; AI will be the new blamee in a few years.
Thanks Joe.
As long as they filled out and passed the background check, nothing to see here.
Wait, corruption in Chicago?!?
Yeah, well, it's NOT COVID that did that, but shutdowns forced on the population by feckless bureaucrats. But go ahead and deflect from the criminals that caused the harm, and make them sound like saviors in some natural catastrophe.
p
!!!NOOOOO WAY!!! Color Me shocked. And here I thought they spent it on Library Books and a new playground for the Chillinz. (Armored of course.)
I’m from the government and here to help you.
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