DOJ's new WHIP program pays up to $30,000 at the charging stage for fraud tips, including SBA programs. The 120-day internal reporting clock is the part to watch.

Richard Teplitsky has pleaded guilty to mail fraud in a decades-long investment scheme built around purported equipment loans. Federal prosecutors put the losses at $54.4 million.

Timothy Wadsworth got 51 months for a $2 million fraud spanning EIDL, PPP, unemployment and stolen credit cards. The relief money was not where it started.

California man convicted of SBA EIDL fraud after gambling $442K and paying a $100K kickback. The case raises questions about loan oversight.

Arthur Spitzer pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud and $1.8M in EIDL fraud. Why COVID relief was the easiest mark a paper fraudster ever found.

Dallas loan broker Kwanghee Anh fled the U.S. for years after a $29M bank fraud scheme. She was caught in South Korea and sentenced to 58 months.

A Georgia businessman faces bank and wire fraud charges after prosecutors say he used fabricated brokerage statements and forged documents to obtain $24 million in financing.

Carmine Agnello, grandson of mob boss John Gotti, has begun his 15-month prison term for $1.1M in COVID relief fraud after a judge denied further kidney transplant delays.

First Brands is asking a bankruptcy court to approve a creditor settlement built around litigation recoveries as the Justice Department objects.

A Michigan man was sentenced to prison for PPP loan fraud and COVID rental assistance fraud, highlighting ongoing pandemic relief fraud enforcement.

Palm Beach native Elaine Angene Escoe is on the run for a massive $34 million pandemic relief fraud scheme, making FBI history in the process.

John Gotti's grandson stole $1.1M in COVID relief, funneled $420K into crypto, and got 15 months in prison. Prosecutors wanted three years. Here's why that matters.

From a $40 million Houston bank fraud scheme to a South Florida deputy's PPP loan scam, two new cases show how financial fraud is being prosecuted.

At MoneyThumb, we see this firsthand. Fraudsters are no longer just exploiting weak passwords or outdated software; they’re mimicking entire financial identities.

When First Brands Group filed for bankruptcy on September 28, 2025, Wall Street expected a messy restructuring. What they got instead was a financial crime thriller involving $2.3 billion in factoring deals that simply vanished, and a DOJ investigation into one of the most brazen alleged frauds in recent memory.

“Open Banking helps to make the eBay Seller Capital application process easier, faster and more holistic for small businesses, so we can help more eBay sellers start and grow their businesses,”

In one of the more notable COVID-relief fraud cases to hit the lending industry, a California business loan broker has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for orchestrating a scheme to defraud the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.

In the summer of 2020, while small businesses across America struggled to survive the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, Darren Carlyle Sadler was living a very different reality. The 38-year-old Costa Mesa businessman had discovered what he believed was the perfect opportunity hidden within the chaos of the federal government's rushed response to the crisis.

Stephanie Hockridge and her husband, Nathan Reis, co-founded Blueacorn in April 2020 at the height of the pandemic panic. The platform was positioned as a rapid-response solution for distributing PPP funds to small businesses locked out of traditional banking channels. But according to federal prosecutors, Blueacorn became a machine of fraud, processing over $12.5 billion in loans while implementing virtually no guardrails to prevent abuse.

Federal prosecutors continue their aggressive pursuit of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) fraud, with two recent high-profile convictions demonstrating that the Department of Justice remains committed to holding fraudsters accountable nearly five years after the pandemic began.