“The faster the better,” the workers were told at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, as the little-known financial technology company Blueacorn raced to review small businesses that sought federal loans.

Nearly 50 people were charged on Tuesday with carrying out a sweeping COVID-19 fraud scheme in which they allegedly stole close to $250 million from a federal program meant to feed hungry children in Minneapolis.

At a press conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland called it “the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme charged to date.”

US Secret Service investigators have seized $286 million in illegally obtained coronavirus pandemic relief funds, the agency announced Friday.

An investigation run by the service's Orlando, Florida, field office determined conspirators fraudulently submitted small business pandemic relief loan applications "using fabricated or stolen employment and personal information," the agency said. The US Secret Service said criminals used a third-party payment system and over 15,000 accounts to conceal and move illegal funds.

The U.S. Secret Service has returned $286 million in stolen COVID-19 relief funds to the Small Business Administration, the agency said Friday.

Driving the news: The funds, originally a form of aid to businesses struggling during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, were obtained by scammers using fake identities and dummy accounts, the agency said.

The U.S. Secret Service seized approximately $286 million in stolen Economic Injury Disaster Loans, the organization announced today. The fraudulently obtained funds were returned to the Small Business Administration.

The Secret Service identified 15,000 accounts used to apply for COVID relief loans using stolen employment and personal information.

Lingering health concerns about commercial air travel during the COVID-19 pandemic have fueled a boom in private jet travel, a trend that has led to fresh scrutiny of the industry's taxpayer bailout -- which some critics are calling a "handout to the wealthy."

The multi-trillion-dollar federal rescue for businesses clobbered by the coronavirus included billions for airlines grounded by travel restrictions and safety concerns -- and, according to one report, more than half a billion dollars for boutique aviation firms that deliver private jet travel to the super-rich.

As Congress launched a historic bailout to keep businesses afloat at the outset of the pandemic, government officials stressed that the loans were for mom-and-pop operations that didn’t have another easily available lifeline.

“This was a program designed for small businesses,” then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, as companies like Shake Shack and Potbelly made headlines for grabbing millions from the newly created Paycheck Protection Program. “It was not a program that was designed for public companies that had liquidity.”

FOR 24 YEARS, Ericka Gray has owned her own mediation and arbitration business in Arlington, Massachusetts, helping organizations navigate workplace disputes. But when the Covid-19 pandemic began, her income completely dried up. “I had no business, nothing for a number of months,” she said. “Everybody was otherwise occupied.”

The shoreline communities of Ocean County, New Jersey, are a summertime getaway for throngs of urbanites, lined with vacation homes and ice cream parlors. Not exactly pastoral — which is odd, considering dozens of Paycheck Protection Program loans to supposed farms that flowed into the beach towns last year.