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A USAID employee responsible for overseeing agency contracts created a fictitious company to illegally obtain coronavirus relief funds for personal gain, federal prosecutors announced Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cYusuf Akoll worked as a Senior Procurement Contract Specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development,\u201d according to a previously unreported\u00a0<\/p>\n
court document. \u201cFrom at least in or around March 2021, and continuing through at least in or around August 2021, Akoll [made] materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements\u2026that resulted in Akoll receiving two [Paycheck Protection Program] loans totaling approximately $16,666 that he was not entitled to receive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege that in November 2020, Akoll registered a company in Virginia named Naagode Consulting LLC and then applied for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan under the federal COVID-19 relief program. He claimed to be employed by Naagode and stated the funds were needed to avoid layoffs.<\/p>\n
However, eligibility for the program required businesses to be operational as of February 2020, prompting Akoll to falsely list the company\u2019s start date as January 2020. To justify the loan, he also claimed the company earned $40,000 in 2019, despite it having no income at all, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n
Akoll was charged with making false statements in Washington, D.C., federal court through an \u201cinformation,\u201d a filing that typically indicates a plea agreement is in the works, the Daily Wire\u00a0<\/p>\n
reported.The fact that the loan was approved underscores how recklessly the government distributed vast sums of money during the coronavirus pandemic. Akoll\u2019s claim that the company earned $40,000 in 2019 directly contradicted his own assertion that it wasn\u2019t founded until January 2020.<\/p>\n
Small Business Administration officials failed to verify the company\u2019s formation date\u2014easily accessible through state corporation records\u2014or cross-check the claimed income against federal tax filings, revealing a lack of basic due diligence. It also highlights the kind of oversight gaps the Department of Government Efficiency has focused on addressing as a core part of its mission.<\/p>\n
USAID was shut down, and its remaining functions were absorbed into the State Department amid concerns from Republicans and the Department of Government Efficiency over widespread financial mismanagement. According to\u00a0<\/p>\n
records, Akoll had oversight of hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding directed to foreign countries, money that was often difficult to track and monitor effectively.<\/p>\n
Coronavirus relief payments were distributed under a \u201cpay and chase\u201d model, in which the government prioritized rapid disbursement with the expectation that fraudulent claims would be pursued later. However, the Biden administration largely abandoned efforts to recover those funds.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the Biden administration announced it would not attempt to collect loans under $100,000 that were technically required to be repaid, citing \u201cequity\u201d concerns. While most loans were designed to be forgiven, recipients who failed to meet forgiveness criteria were still obligated to repay them.<\/p>\n
This decision drew criticism from the Small Business Administration\u2019s inspector general, who said the policy \u201cis not in compliance with applicable criteria.\u201d It warned that failing to pursue known fraudsters sends a message that abuse of government programs will go unpunished.<\/p>\n
In March 2025, Congress came close to allowing the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery (SIGPR)\u2014the watchdog established to investigate fraud in the pandemic relief effort\u2014to expire, a move that would have effectively ended scrutiny of one of the largest and most disorderly government spending sprees in history.<\/p>\n
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) criticized the office, arguing it had recovered just three dollars for every dollar spent on staffing, less than what he believed was acceptable. However, watchdog group CourtWatch, which pushed for the office\u2019s continuation, countered that SIGPR operated with only a few dozen employees and shutting it down would further hamper efforts to recover misused funds.<\/p>\n
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the head of the Senate DOGE Caucus, fought to keep the inspector general, saying, \u201cI will not allow fraudsters to get away with stealing hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayers.\u201dThe head of Lexis Nexis Risk Solutions testified to Congress that criminals stole\u00a0<\/p>\n
$1 trillion\u00a0in COVID money, most of which went overseas.<\/p>\n
After Zohran Mamdani\u2019s victory in the New York City mayoral election\u2014making him the city\u2019s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor-elect\u2014Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., signaled plans to try to block him from taking office.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump has accused the 34-year-old Ugandan-born politician of being a communist, after previously warning that he would withhold federal funding from New York City if Mamdani won. Mamdani secured his win last week with a decisive margin, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo by nearly 10 percentage points, though Mamdani barely won a majority of votes overall.<\/p>\n
But some Republican lawmakers have vowed to block him from taking office. Some Republican lawmakers have demanded investigations into Mamdani\u2019s naturalisation process, calling for him to be stripped of his US citizenship and deported. They have accused him of involvement in communist and \u201cterrorist\u201d activities and figures linked to terrorism.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Mamdani lied on his naturalisation documents, he doesn\u2019t get to be a citizen, and he certainly doesn\u2019t get to run for mayor of New York City. A great American city is on the precipice of being run by a communist who has publicly embraced a terroristic ideology,\u201d Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) said in an October 29 news release, after asking US Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the mayor-elect,\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a campaign finance watchdog\u00a0has filed two criminal referrals against Mamdani, accusing the leftist socialist of taking illicit donations from overseas contributors.<\/p>\n
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation sent the recommendations to the Department of Justice\u2019s Criminal Division and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg\u2019s office last week. They say that Mamdani may have broken the Federal Election Campaign Act and the New York Election Code.<\/p>\n
The recommendations were made after the New York Post reported earlier this month that Mamdani\u2019s campaign got about $13,000 in donations from at least 170 people who live outside the US, including one from his mother-in-law in Dubai.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are not isolated incidents or clerical errors,\u201d Dan Backer, a national campaign finance expert and president of the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a sustained pattern of foreign money flowing into a New York City mayoral race which is a clear violation of both federal law and New York City campaign finance rules,\u201d Backer added. \u201cMamdani\u2019s campaign was on notice for months that it was accepting illegal foreign contributions, and yet it did nothing meaningful to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation has previously filed complaints against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign, and the Democratic National Committee.<\/p>\n
The watchdog told Bragg and the DOJ to look into and arrest Mamdani for the campaign cash that may have come from Australia, Turkey, France, Canada, Germany, and other countries.<\/p>\n
The group said that Mamdani\u2019s campaign had shown a \u201csystematic failure to comply\u201d with the rules about campaign money.<\/p>\n
The Federal Election Campaign Act says that it is against the law to \u201caccept or receive\u201d donations from people who are not US citizens in any federal, state, or local election.<\/p>\n
People who knowingly accept donations from other countries could face big fines and jail time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe law is crystal clear that foreign nationals may not participate in American elections, and that includes making contributions,\u201d Backer continued. \u201cYet Mamdani\u2019s campaign repeatedly accepted donations from individuals abroad, some even tied to regions and individuals openly sympathetic to hostile actors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether through negligence or intent, this conduct undermines the integrity of the democratic process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s campaign for mayor of New York City sent back about $9,000 in donations from people outside the U.S., the Post reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A USAID employee responsible for overseeing agency contracts created a fictitious company to illegally obtain coronavirus relief funds for personal gain, federal prosecutors announced Friday. \u201cYusuf Akoll worked as a Senior Procurement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2.watchtowatch.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}