An independent watchdog has singled out more Cook County employees who fraudulently applied for pandemic relief, recommending firings in each case for violation of county rules around conduct and reporting of outside jobs.
It’s the latest in an ongoing investigation by the county’s Office of the Independent Inspector General to determine whether county workers who applied for federal Paycheck Protection Program loans were violating any personnel rules. In all, the OIIG’s office has released more than a dozen findings of violations of such rules since July, as well as evidence of fraudulent applications and misspent funds.
The PPP program gave out hundreds of billions of dollars in forgivable loans to be used to keep businesses afloat during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has been rife with fraud nationally.
As of last month, the Justice Department’s Fraud Section had prosecuted roughly 200 defendants in more than 120 criminal cases, seizing “over $78 million in cash proceeds derived from fraudulently obtained PPP funds, as well as numerous real estate properties and luxury items purchased with such proceeds,” according to a release.
But that’s a drop in the bucket compared with the $80 billion some experts estimate was stolen from the program nationally.
The Chicago Housing Authority identified 16 employees last summer who had obtained fraudulent loans. Chief Judge Timothy Evans has hired an outside law firm to investigate whether his…
