Quick help often also enables quick fraud. Tens of millions of euros in Corona aid were tapped into by subsidy scammers.
Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) – Many white-collar criminals have misused unbureaucratic state corona aid for subsidy fraud. In the first two years of the pandemic alone, 2020 and 2021, the damage caused by such crimes in North Rhine-Westphalia totaled around 53 million euros. This emerges from the “NRW Economic Crime Situation 2021”, which the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) published on Tuesday. The balance sheet for 2022 is not yet available. The LKA reported that further cases are to be expected.
“With the Corona aid, we have supported people who have got into financial difficulties due to the pandemic quickly and unbureaucratically,” said NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) of the German Press Agency in Düsseldorf. “Unfortunately, criminals saw this as opening some doors for their fraud.” This subsidy fraud is clouding white-collar crime figures in 2021.
“It’s worrying, but not incurable,” emphasized Reul. “Our investigators are on the heels of these scammers.” In a subsidy fraud complex alone, which is said to have been organized by bogus companies, 40 suspects have recently been identified and several arrest warrants have been executed. “The suspects are said to have swindled millions in emergency corona aid,” reported Reul.
Overall, the number of cases of white-collar crime in NRW fell by around 22 percent from 2020 to 2021 to 6540 offences. “This is the lowest value in the past ten years,” says the situation report. The proportion of white-collar crime in the total number of all around 1.2 million offenses recorded in the crime statistics for 2021 is only 0.54 percent.
In contrast, the proportion of total damage (around 1.4 billion euros) from all criminal offenses is much higher at around 38 percent or almost 530 million euros. According to the report, the clear-up rate for white-collar crime is around 82 percent. The average damage per offense here is 80,836 euros.
“Complex facts with international references are characteristic of white-collar crime,” said the LKA. The process usually lasts several years. For this reason, the development of white-collar crime can only be understood by looking at a longer period of time.
For example, the damage caused by white-collar crime in 2021 was significantly reduced by around 57 percent compared to the previous year. However, it increased disproportionately in 2020 due to outstanding criminal proceedings.
Fraud made up the largest proportion of all white-collar crimes in 2021 at around 56 percent. More than 87 percent of all white-collar crimes involving the internet fell into this category.
