The PR Secretary of Justice, Inés Carrau, said that there are so many cases of fraud to the PUA to investigate, that the filings of charges could take place after the end of this year.
Federal and state authorities investigate nearly 100,000 cases of fraud to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, which includes different modalities and schemes of theft, such as the illegal appropriation of another person’s identity or lying. when filling out the application.
Outstanding federal agents in the Department of Labor analyze and audit requests to detect possible fraud schemes, while others inquire into cases of identity theft detected by the Police by people who have come to banks to cash checks to which they were not entitled.
Meanwhile, the federal prosecutor’s office in San Juan and the Department of Justice are in talks to process what is expected to be a flood of cases. There are so many that they could end up in court after this year is over.
“Taking the information that the Secretary of Labor gives us, that some 307,000 applied for and received PUA benefits, we must be thinking that there must be almost 100,000 people who have somehow benefited from PUA funds without having the right to this ”, the Secretary of Justice (DJ), Inés Carrau, told the press.
“If we take as a basis that the Secretary of Labor says that there are only 15,000 public employees, (not counting) the rest of the population that has requested, that is why I make this calculation of mine, based on the information we have obtained . There must be almost 100,000 people involved in this, ”Carrau added.
The Secretary of Justice agreed with what was raised by the Secretary of Labor, Carlos Rivera Santiago, that the final number of public employees who unlawfully benefited from the PUA has yet to be defined.
Rivera Santiago indicated that he estimated that the amount could exceed 10,000 cases, but explained that there are cases in which the agency’s system identifies someone as an employee of an agency, but later they corroborate that he was no longer in the public sector.
“You have to make sure those listings are up to date,” said Carrau. “We received a list of people who were supposedly employees of the Department of Justice (requesting the PUA), but when we checked with Human Resources we saw that they were no longer there,” Carrau said.
“You have to refine those lists to have a more concrete, more accurate idea of the people who are public employees,” she added.
For his part, Rivera Santiago also did not rule out that some of those requests correspond to people who have had the identity of a public employee stolen.
“It happened to us. We detected that someone stole the identity of an employee of the Department of Labor and submitted a request in his name, ”said Rivera Santiago.
For now, the official maintained the estimate of almost 10,000 PUA applications corresponding preliminarily to public employees, who are not entitled to the benefit for being on the payroll of an agency, regardless of whether they have lost any additional income from their job in the government.
“It could be over 10,000 (cases of fraud of public employees),” he said.
On the other hand, he said that, at a general level, “we are seeing different schemes and modalities, from the one who steals the identity, the one who returns to work and does not report it, to the minors who enter the system and are confined,” said Rivera Santiago , who said he was about to corroborate whether it is true that there is a request on behalf of Jensen Medina Cardona, who is incarcerated in a jail awaiting trial on murder charges. “You have to see if someone stole his identity and submitted a request ”.
“In the case of inmates, historically there are different cases of fraud that are committed from prisons, such as identity theft, but they definitely need help from someone (in the free community) to help them,” he maintained. “It happened to us with the unemployment (benefit) after Hurricane Maria.”
Rivera Santiago stressed that at the moment the Department of Labor has recovered $ 12.5 million returned since they began the alert campaign for fraud.
He also highlighted since March that requests were made using a form in which people “swore” that the information was true. They recently began using the so-called “FastPUA” that validates the information with the Department of the Treasury.
Rivera Santiago said that it raises “suspicion” that they had previously had over 300,000 applications and with the new system the number was reduced to 60,000.
“It is really worrying that there are people in real need, others come to want to pretend to be smart and cut off others the possibility of receiving the funds they need to support their family,” said, for his part, Carrau.
The investigation process is anticipated to such an extent that an interagency effort is developed to process the cases.
Carrau and Rivera Santiago indicated that they have held several meetings to coordinate logistics.
Carrau explained that the Special Investigations Bureau (NIE) will be in charge of processing the cases of public employees. Meanwhile, complaints against citizens of the private sector will be handled by the Puerto Rico Police, whose Bank Theft and Fraud Division has dealt with cases that have arisen from people arrested in financial institutions.
As of Saturday, the Police have arrested 67 people who were trying to cash PUA checks obtained illegally. With these interventions, the Bank Theft and Fraud Division has recovered $ 414,196.
The most recent case was that of a 20-year-old arrested with a false ID while trying to cash a PUA check for $ 11,454.
“Those cases have been taking root (in the courts). We are at an average of 10 to 11 cases per week, and we are establishing a strategy to increase the number, ”said Lebrón, after anticipating that it is part of the preparation for the increase in the number of cases that are expected.
In relation to the fraud detected in the Department of Labor, Rivera Santiago said that “we are working the logistics so that we send the referrals (to Justice) in an orderly manner, because there are many cases.”
“Referrals have already begun and the cases are being investigated. The volume is quite high ”, he added.
According to Carrau, “a work team assigned to work on these cases” was created, led by prosecutors from the DJ’s Economic Crimes Division who are in charge of the PUA cases specifically, although he does not rule out dealing with other crimes related to fraud. unemployment benefit.
He said those staff will work directly with prosecutors in each of the 13 districts where the cases would be filed.
When asked if they could process all this before the end of 2020, Carrau said that “because of the number of cases, I understand that it is going to spread a little more.”
As part of that process, Carrau said that he has had meetings “also with federal authorities to work in a coordinated manner to expedite the filing of charges as soon as possible.”
“We are in negotiations, beginning to coordinate with them,” added the official.
According to the Secretary of Labor, a “Task Force” of federal officials works auditing applications and investigating possible fraud schemes in the PUA, which is funded by funds from the United States government.
In addition to having conversations with the federal prosecutor’s office, Rivera Santiago said that in that group there are agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Labor of the United States (OIG-DoL).
In particular, he noted that the FBI has a prominent agent in the Department of Labor in this investigation.
Meanwhile, this media was able to confirm that the FBI is investigating identity theft by people who have been arrested by the Police when cashing checks at banks, as stated this month by Lieutenant Wilson Lebrón, commander of the Auxiliary Superintendency of Criminal Investigations (SAIC) .
Lebrón told the press last week that they have identified the sale of fake driver’s licenses in amounts of up to $500.
“With federal authorities we do not have to make referrals, because they have an agent, in addition to the OIG auditing us,” explained Rivera Santiago. “They assume jurisdiction.”
“We have met with them and we have a contact agent who is in the investigations and is pending the cases,” he added.
When the Secretary of Labor was asked if he understood that federal authorities would process cases soon, he replied: “Yes. Obviously, I do not have access to how they are doing the cases, but yes, I do not rule out at what federal level they are going to take these cases “.
“In particular, the FBI has its hands full with these investigations in Puerto Rico and other states,” he said.
According to Rivera Santiago, “making the request is not illegal, because I, Secretary of Labor, can try to request, let’s say a benefit like the PAN, but when I report that I have such a job, the agency will see that and they will deny it”.
“The crime is to give false information so that they can approve the assistance benefit,” he said.
