> IMO, this is fraud, of a criminal nature. People should go to jail.

I have been in companies getting money from government programs. It's not fraud from the government side, at least not for what I've seen.

The problem is that companies see government programs as a way to make easy money. If the government pays a company for X, that's because that company has expertise in X. So it's easy for the company to bullshit the government employees and sell them crap.

Companies abuse the government funding as much as they possible and legally can, and then we blame the government. And on top of that we would want fewer regulations? If you want to be able to punish abuse from companies, you need regulations, and you need to apply them.