WASHINGTON - Nearly $100 billion have been stolen from COVID-19 relief programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic, according to a report issued by the US Secret Service Tuesday.

The estimate is based on Secret Service cases and data from the Labor Department, Roy Dotson, the agency's national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator, said in an interview.

According to the US Labor Department, most of the figure came from unemployment fraud, and about 87 billion dollars in unemployment benefits could have been paid improperly.