Absolutely mind-blowing sums of money have been embezzled or plain wasted out of trillions of dollars the federal government disbursed.

This money was distributed as a means of helping businesses and individuals cope with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, a new analysis estimates that some $400 billion in taxpayer funds went down the drain.

While the need to prop up small businesses and help individuals hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic might have been objective at first, the Biden administration knew no control. It seemingly seized the chance for plentiful pork-barrel spending.

As a result, a new analysis by the pro-left Associated Press news agency has shown at least 10% of the $4.2 trillion COVID-19 relief funds – or more than $400 billion – was mostly stolen, or at least squandered for no rational reason whatsoever.

According to AP, about $280 billion of the federal coronavirus aid got embezzled by different kinds of fraudsters. On top of that, another $123 billion was either “misspent” or “wasted,” the news outlet estimates.

The figure of the embezzled COVID money, however, is only set to spike further since more investigations are uncovering new cases of fraud, Reason notes in a report based on the AP analysis.

It points out literally thousands of grift probes are ongoing; at least 2,230 suspects have already been slapped with pandemic relief fraud charges.

The news outlet quotes the Justice Department’s acting director dealing with coronavirus fraud enforcement, Mike Galdo. He says there has been an “unprecedented amount of fraud” with the lavishly disbursed taxpayer money.

According to the report, one substantial factor for making possible the easy theft of billions of federal government dollars was a major omission by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

SBA decided against cross-checking the loan applications it received under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) against a “Do Not Pay” database of the US Treasury Department.

The latter is specifically designed to prevent convicted criminals and known scammers from grabbing hold of taxpayer dollars.

The SBA’s ludicrous enforcement failure practically made sure that numerous fraudsters would have a free hand with the lavish COVID-19 pandemic handouts.