CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s two U.S. Attorneys are teaming up to offer their offices’ resources to local and state law enforcement to help crack down on fraud.
Moore Capito, federal prosecutor for West Virginia’s southern district and Matt Harvey who holds the position in northern West Virginia are engaged in an effort which has become a national focus amid an executive order from the White House. Vice-President J.D. Vance has headed up the national task force to combat fraud wherever it’s detected.
Capito said it’s a bigger issue than most might believe.
“Fraud isn’t one billionaire losing a million dollars to another billionaire. There’s always a West Virginia spin to it and it’s happening right under our noses,” said Capito in a recent edition of MetroNews Midday.
Capito’s office has been churning out its own series of fraud investigations where Government money has been misspent, misappropriated, and in many cases brazenly stolen. He indicated it started with investigations into abuse of the Paycheck Protection Program which came out of the pandemic. At one point, Capito’s office led the nation in the amount of fraud recovered from illegal PPP loans. More recently, his office tackled incidents of tax fraud. The matter came into the national conversation when the extreme fraud was discovered in Minnesota where federal funds were directed to alleged daycares which didn’t exist and Millions of taxpayer dollars were scammed.
“When programs are established, whether it’s SNAP or Medicaid or whatever it is, those programs are created with good intentions. The problem is you have too many people out there who are a little to cavalier about how those dollars are being spent,” explained Capito.
He and Harvey are holding meetings with law enforcement partners in their districts to listen to where they are with fraud investigations. Capito said in some cases, local police don’t have the resources to fight fraud. It’s a very resource intensive process. The U.S. Attorney’s office has offered to do the leg work to free up local law enforcement to continue the more important day-to-day role of keeping the public safe.
“So many of our police departments and sheriff’s departments are strapped for people and we’ve got a duty to protect communities number one. But we want to make ourselves available to attack fraud too because we’ve got a duty to protect taxpayer dollars,” he said.
“If you have a countrywide, U.S. Attorney coordinated effort, we’re able to find these multi-state schemes a little easier. These multi-state schemes crop up in tiny communities all over the country,” Capito explained.