Greetings, OnPolitics readers!
Justice Department officials announced charges Wednesday against 21 people accused in connection with $149 million in false billings and theft from federal …
Greetings, OnPolitics readers! Justice Department officials announced charges Wednesday against 21 people accused in connection with $149 million in false billings and theft from federal programs related to the government’s COVID-19 response. The sweep of suspects from across the country included physicians, marketers and manufacturers of fake vaccination cards along with purveyors of phony cures. Among the defendants: a 53-year-old Colorado man was charged in an alleged scheme to forge hundreds of fake vaccination cards. Some of the cards, the suspect allegedly told an undercover agent, were sold to people headed to the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games last August, including three Olympians. While the suspects were allegedly linked to schemes valued at $149 million, officials said the actual loss to the government totaled about $20 million. It’s Amy and Chelsey with today’s top stories out of Washington. It’s anything but. Russia stopped short of routing hundreds of Ukrainian fighters from the strategic city’s giant steel plant. Both Ukraine and President Joe Biden have rejected Putin’s claim of victory. What is clear is that Mariupol’s residents have endured some of the worst atrocities committed by the Russians even as Russia has lost an estimated quarter of its combat forces in Ukraine – troops, aircraft, tanks ships and other equipment – since the war began Feb.
