Left Holding the Bag

Inside the largest public fraud scandal in US history-how novice, experienced, and professional fraudsters from around the world stole hundreds of billions of US pandemic relief dollars. "Part history, part thriller, part biography...," Left Holding the Bag is a compelling inside account from former inspector general and pandemic watchdog Bob Westbrooks. Part cop/part auditor, Westbrooks takes you behind the scenes as he chronicles how Washington responded to its COVID test and how American taxpayers lost roughly $500 billion to pandemic relief fraud and waste. With a mask-wearing nation under stay-at-home orders while a deadly virus ravaged the population, during PPE shortages and people dying alone in ICUs, before vaccines and immunity and time reopened the American way of life after three years, the federal government, through six hastily written COVID-19 relief laws provided the largest infusion of emergency relief spending in US history. The federal government distributed an unfathomable $5 trillion, through a jumble of federal programs in the hundreds, to a menagerie of recipients in the millions. Some federal programs were poorly designed and easily exploited by unscrupulous operators. Competing crises soon distracted the nation, while homegrown and global pirates looted federal pandemic relief programs and plundered roughly $500 billion in relief funds-and left American taxpayers holding the bag. This book takes you back to this extraordinary time, the federal government's unprecedented response, and the exemplary work of the inspectors general and their federal law enforcement partners as they followed the money, flagged fraud risks, disrupted fraud schemes, and chased bad guys through a stunning true crime wave. Our country literally can't afford another financial hit like this, and Westbrooks provides a blueprint to help ensure it never happens again.