 of higher inflation is not that hard to find. He says that the response to the pandemic's dislocations, the U.S. government sent about $5 trillion in checks to people and businesses. $3 trillion of it was newly printed money with no plans to ever have that repaid. So it looks like scammers got away with lots of free cash during the pandemic. And hey, so did lots of other people that got the money, even though they weren't trying to scam the government.