Coming out.

You know, greed makes people do a lot of dumb things, and I think they think that perhaps

the government is just too busy getting all the money out to notice, but they're making

a mistake when they make those assumptions.

For Vault Studios, I'm Will Johnson.

You're listening to The Daily Crime.

What kind of people are doing this, reviving dormant businesses, and trying to get away with this?

We've seen it through any number of professions, people, backgrounds in small business, backgrounds in accounting, backgrounds in the legal field.

I think they understand the paperwork process. I mean, there were people seriously in distress, backgrounds in the legal field. I think they understand the paperwork process.

I mean, there were people seriously in distress, but this just wasn't the mechanism that they should have chosen.

I mean, they defrauded the government.

For some people, the pandemic has been an opportunity to take advantage of other people.

And in some cases, take advantage of government relief funds, money that should be going to

legitimate businesses that need the help. I'm joined by KUSA investigative reporter Jeremy

Heohola in Denver. He's been busy uncovering a scam that involves bogus businesses that have

been seemingly brought back to life. Jeremy, tell us what you've learned and how you came

across this particular crime.

Sure. So what we did is we went through government databases, and I know that sounds really boring, but we went through government databases and we went through millions and millions of

lines of data showing what businesses got COVID relief monies. And these are monies that are

intended to go to small businesses to help pay

employees. But as we were going through this government data, as I was scrolling, looking for

anomalies, looking for fraud, I found this repeating address that just popped up. And essentially,

...