# Employee Retention Credit figures and Justice Department cases

Two tables on the Employee Retention Credit (ERC). The first holds 42 official figures, rules and dates from the IRS, IRS Criminal Investigation, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), GAO, the National Taxpayer Advocate and the Treasury, from July 2023 to September 2026. The second holds 73 Justice Department press releases, 2023 to 2026, each announcing a step in a criminal case about the credit, with the defendants named as the release names them.

Published at https://pandemicdarlings.com/data/erc-claims-and-enforcement/ . Compiled table; not part of release pandemic-darlings-data-v1-2026-07-10. Built 2026-09-23.

## Files

| file | rows | bytes | sha256 |
|---|---|---|---|
| `erc-official-figures.csv` | 42 | 26,313 | `2427ce4d48491b8dc352ddc443ddb62263f710771e6b2f2bc6dab3bcdd4b9389` |
| `erc-doj-releases.csv` | 73 | 45,959 | `f575b9076777e997365b3786b3e3b023a8daec616e10d49448b2ae04141857d5` |
| `erc-doj-releases-screening.csv` | 98 | 24,664 | `6ffbe86b51919ca793e05cf1a787a303b95946524dae3e85dcb7d603de4c89f1` |

`dictionary.csv` beside this file describes every column of the three tables. `SHA256SUMS` carries the SHA-256 of every file in the folder.

## What this is

`erc-official-figures.csv` has one row per figure or dated rule: claims received and processed, the September 2023 processing moratorium, the two Voluntary Disclosure Programs, disallowances, IRS Criminal Investigation's investigation counts, TIGTA's and GAO's findings, the 2025 law that ended late claims, and the claims still open. Each row gives the value exactly as printed, the date it describes, and the words that carry it.

`erc-doj-releases.csv` has one row per press release that announces a step in an ERC case: 26 pleaded guilty, 24 sentenced, 10 indicted, 3 charged by complaint, 2 arrested, 2 charged, 2 convicted at trial, 1 arrested on indictment, 1 arrested on complaint, 1 charged by bill of information, 1 convicted (guilty pleas). By conduct: 55 involve false claims filed with the IRS, 11 stolen or diverted ERC refund checks, 4 insiders taking refunds due to an employer, and 3 other conduct around the credit. By year: 2023 4, 2024 22, 2025 26, 2026 21.

`erc-doj-releases-screening.csv` lists all 98 releases that name the credit, with what was done with each: 73 table rows, 10 copies of the same announcement posted by a second Justice Department office, 7 later releases that restate an earlier one, and 8 releases that mention the credit without an ERC case.

## How it was built

The official figures were copied from the documents; every verbatim span was found again in the document file when the table was built (42 of 42) and pinned to its PDF page. The SHA-256 of each file is in the row.

The releases come from the archive's collection of Justice Department press releases, retrieved from justice.gov's public press-release interface: 131,293 releases dated January 2020 to July 4, 2026 and 4,112 dated July 4 to September 15, 2026. A release was a candidate if its title or text names the "employee retention credit" (or "employee retention tax credit", ERC or ERTC). Each of the 98 candidates was read. Defendants were copied from the body of the release, not the headline. Every amount, sentence and later update in the table was checked to appear in the release text, and every name to appear in the body.

## Before you quote a row

**The official figures count different things at different dates.** "Approximately 3.6 million" is claims the IRS had received by September 14, 2023; "nearly 5 million" is claims GAO says the IRS had processed by June 2025; TIGTA's 184,923 are returns, not claims. Quote each with its date and its unit.

**There is no official improper payment rate for the ERC.** GAO reports that the IRS "did not complete an improper payment estimate for ERC, as required in law". The Treasury's PaymentAccuracy.gov page says that in August 2022 the Treasury "decided it would not report an improper payment estimate". TIGTA's "more than $2 billion" is an estimate for 184,923 returns that skipped examination, not for the program.

**IRS Criminal Investigation's counts are worded differently each time.** One is "as of" a date, one is "in FY 2024", one is "from the start of the pandemic". The task force report's $2.9 billion at the end of 2023 is lower than the $3.4 billion IRS-CI gave for September 30, 2023. The rows quote each as printed.

**A release is not a case, and a charge is not a conviction.** One case can produce an arrest, an indictment, a plea and a sentencing release; the table keeps each step as its own row. Charged defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty. The three defendants in the Utah case announced on February 3, 2023 were acquitted, according to the update the Justice Department added to that release.

**Sought is not stolen.** 38 rows give the amount claimed from the IRS, 41 the amount paid out, obtained or on a check, 15 both and 9 neither; the two columns keep them apart. Many amounts include the paid sick and family leave credits filed on the same forms; the credits column says so where the release does. Do not add amounts across rows: releases on the same case repeat the same figures.

**Names are as printed.** Spelling variants are kept (Isaiah and Isaac Aaron Tenryk; Aylissa and Alyssa Glidewell), with a note on the row.

**The site's DOJ press-release index counts fewer ERC releases, because it covers less.** The index holds the 2,879 releases found by searching Justice Department press releases for ten phrases; its program column names the credit in 37 of them, all among the 98 screened here, and 40 of the 98 are in the index at all. This table was screened from all 135,405 releases in the archive's Justice Department collection.

**Only releases that name the credit are here.** 24 further releases in the collection describe fraud with COVID-19 employment tax or sick-leave credits without naming the ERC; they are not in the table. Releases after September 15, 2026 are not in the collection.

## What it does not measure

It is not a count of ERC prosecutions: the Justice Department does not issue a release for every case, and the table holds only releases in the archive's collection. It says nothing about businesses that claimed the credit lawfully, and it does not total the amounts.

## Citation

Employee Retention Credit figures and Justice Department cases, compiled from IRS, IRS Criminal Investigation, TIGTA, GAO, National Taxpayer Advocate and Treasury documents dated 2023-07-26 to 2026-09-19, and Justice Department press releases dated 2023-02-03 to 2026-09-14.

## Rights

Compiled from U.S. government public records; attribution to Pandemic Darlings requested for the compiled table.