Fraud Crimes Attorney in Decatur, Georgia

What trends do you see in the prosecution of fraud cases?

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Some trends in federal fraud prosecutions, one that’s really hot right now is PPP fraud, the Paycheck Protection Program that was passed as part of the CARES Act giving the opportunity for employers to get a loan from the government that could potentially be forgiven in order to cover their payroll and in order to keep employees on. The government has, in the last couple of years since PPP was enacted, started to focus on people who fraudulently requested these loans. One sort of a trend that we’ve seen before that is popping up again with these PPP loans is that the government seems to be going after smaller businesses and individuals who they feel have committed fraud rather than the larger companies who got many, many more and much higher amounts of these loans. For one reason or another, the government is focusing on smaller individuals, and that’s something we saw, you know, in the mortgage fraud crisis back in ’08 and beyond. It was the small guys that the government was going after rather than the big lenders or the big banks, and now they’re doing the same with PPP. Some other trends that I’ve seen are social security fraud, phone calls being made to individuals posing as a Social Security Administration in order to get personal information or to request funds illegally. That’s another level of fraud that I’ve seen the government going after recently.

In this video, Atlanta, GA criminal defense attorney Elizabeth A. Brandenburg discusses the trends she sees in the prosecution of fraud cases.

She discusses recent trends in federal fraud prosecutions, focusing on two main areas:

  1. PPP Fraud: The government is increasingly targeting individuals and small businesses that fraudulently applied for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, which were intended to help employers cover payroll during the pandemic. While large companies received larger amounts of these loans, the government has focused on prosecuting smaller businesses and individuals, a pattern similar to what was seen during the mortgage fraud crisis in 2008.
  2. Social Security Fraud: Another trend is the rise in social security fraud, where scammers pose as representatives of the Social Security Administration to steal personal information or illegally request funds. The government has been actively pursuing cases involving this type of fraud as well.

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