Prisoners have been paid at least $1.5 billion in COVID stimulus money sent by both the Trump and Biden administrations after Democrats opposed a ban on payments to the incarcerated.
Around 1.5 million prisoners have been recipients of the payments, which have come under harsh light again after court filings have revealed that disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar received $2,000.
Convicted felons were eligible for all three rounds of individual stimulus payments, which came in the amounts of $1,200, $600 and $1,400, through they had to apply for the benefits and in some cases the payments were garnished for restitution.
In March, as the Biden administration pushed though the latest round of stimulus, Republicans made red meat of the issue, with Senator Tom Cotton fuming that murderers such as Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would be eligible for checks.
However, after contentious legal wrangling last year, a federal judge made it clear that inmates were also eligible for the checks issued under the Trump administration, and the ruling ensured that some $1.5 billion in benefits went to 1.5 million prisoners, according to lawyers in the case.
Larry Nassar received $2,000 in pandemic stimulus payments while incarcerated, but he is not alone. Some 1.5 million prisoners received about $1.5 billion in stimulus payments
The exact amounts of stimulus payments received by individuals prisoners are not clear in most cases, and IRS records that would disclose the payments are not available to the public.
The issue of whether prisoners, including notorious rapists and murderers, should receive stimulus checks has been a source of contention throughout the pandemic.
The CARES Act which authorized the first payment round of $1,200 had language specifically excluding certain categories of tax filers from the payments, including those above a certain income threshold and those listed as dependents by other filers.
However, nothing in the law precluded people in prison from getting the payments, and the broad eligibility rules essentially qualified all American citizens and permanent residents.
Nevertheless, the IRS initially tried to block payments to prisoners, citing criteria from a 2009 law that suspends Social Security benefits for people in prison.
The IRS and Treasury Department even went so far as to attempt to claw back stimulus payments that had been made to prisoners.
'A payment made to someone who is incarcerated should be returned to the IRS,' the Treasury's office of inspector general wrote in a report last June, which slammed the IRS for issuing payments to 84,861 prisoners totaling some $100 million.
This logic puzzled many legal experts, who questioned the ability of the IRS to create exemptions for the payments that were not written into the law.
Senator Tom Cotton fuming that murderers such as Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof (left) and Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (right) would be eligible for checks
Last August, the law firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of more than 1.5 million prisoners, demanding that they receive the stimulus payments.
In October, a U.S. district judge in California
