'Pandemic, Inc.' Author Says Financial Predators Made More Than $1 Billion Off COVID: NPR
- NPR, April 12, 2022. Ed.
When the COVID crisis hit in 2020, the federal government needed far more N95 masks and other protective equipment than it had — so it began awarding contracts to companies promising to provide them, often at a steep mark-up. J. David McSwane, a ProPublica reporter and author of the new book Pandemic, Inc: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick, says a shocking number of those companies had no experience in providing medical equipment.
Indeed, when McSwane and other reporters started combing over the data, they found that two months into the pandemic, the federal government had already handed out more than a billion dollars to companies that had never before had a government contract. "They were just throwing contracts out left and right," he says. Many were run by people with a history of fraud allegations – all of them available in public records if anyone had bothered to check.
"The federal government wanted to keep the recipients of those loans a secret, which is just absurd ... So we, along with some other news organizations, actually had to sue to get it," he says. "And, lo and behold, once we did get it and started analyzing it, we found fraud all over the place." McSwane's new book is a colorful account of the many ways unscrupulous operators profited from the nation's health crisis, and ways the government failed to protect the public from financial predators. We really don't [know the scale] yet. As with almost every relief program that was created as a result of the pandemic, speed was prioritized above all else.
Money was flying out the door with very little incentive to vet people's claims. So really, we're playing catch up. The Paycheck Protection Program had this sort of quirky trend that my colleagues at ProPublica first reported, of hundreds of fake farms that don't exist, like orange groves in Minnesota and dairy farms in Florida. Things that don't make sense. ... Just sort of obviously fake companies. My colleagues went through the business filings, traced all these things back, and found these [businesses] don't exist. But money was paid out, and it's unclear to whom. So federal prosecutors are going to be chasing this type of fraud for many years...
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/04/12/1091678178/pandemic-inc-j-david-mcswane-covid-fraud#:~:text=J.%20David%20McSwane%2C%20a%20ProPublica,experience%20in%20providing%20medical%20equipment.
- “Pandemic, Inc.": J. David McSwane on Chasing Capitalists & Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick. Apr 12, 2022. Democracy Now! ProPublica investigative reporter J. David McSwane tracks pandemic federal relief funds & finds many contracts to acquire critical supplies were wrapped up in unprecedented fraud schemes that left the U.S. government with subpar & unusable equipment. He says an array of contractors were "trying to take advantage of our national emergency," and calls the book "a blueprint of what not to do" during the next pandemic.
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I do hope there is going to be some serious looking into the possibility that these sums were handed out by the IQ45 admin as 'political favors' (in exchange for contributions) as opposed to general government corruption ... but I won't hold my breath, given history (cough Halliburton cough).
