Quote from: Lucius on Today at 12:07:36 PM

At first, I thought it was a mistake, because $100 billion is really huge money - and besides, it all happened in a country that should have mechanisms to prevent such huge misuse of money. I don't think this is something that can be done without the cooperation of both sides - I mean criminals and those who lead the whole operation by the government.

Nearly all of these frauds could have been prevented if the verification process would have been a little more complex than what is now and changing the way the payments as made if the money would have been sent to a bank account that the claimant had on file for his last wage payment all the scams involving a fake identity would have been made useless as even if you assume the identity you are just demanding money to be sent to an account you don't control.
I've never understood why Americans stick to those damn checks, at least it seems they've got the message and the next round will be done mainly via direct deposits.

It was clear from day one that once you've thought the best way is to send a check by mail to whoever makes a claim based just on his identity the problems will occur and every scammer out there that has got his hands on a few of those will try his luck. Every week I read in the news how scammers are getting caught with hundreds of credit cards not in their name, with fake IDs, with full information on some people, and this is just the tip that gets caught.