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$1.4 Billion Fraudulent Aid For Katrina; FEMA easily hoodwinked by scammers
Topic Started: Jun 13 2006, 09:23 PM (123 Views)
tomdrobin
Member
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199348,00.html

"FEMA also could not establish that 750 debit cards worth $1.5 million even went to Katrina victims, the auditors said.

Among the items purchased with the cards:

—an all-inclusive, one-week Caribbean vacation in the Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic.

—five season tickets to New Orleans Saints professional football games.

—adult erotica products in Houston and "Girls Gone Wild" videos in Santa Monica, Calif.

—Dom Perignon champagne and other alcoholic beverages in San Antonio.

—a divorce lawyer's services in Houston.

"Our forensic audit and investigative work showed that improper and potentially fraudulent payments occurred mainly because FEMA did not validate the identity of the registrant, the physical location of the damaged address, and ownership and occupancy of all registrants at the time of registration," GAO officials said.

FEMA paid millions of dollars to more than 1,000 registrants who used names and Social Security numbers belonging to state and federal prisoners for expedited housing assistance. The inmates were in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida.

FEMA made about $5.3 million in payments to registrants who provided a post office box as their damaged residence, including one who got $2,748 for listing an Alabama post office box as the damaged property.

To demonstrate how easy it was to hoodwink FEMA, the GAO told of an individual who used 13 different Social Security numbers — including the person's own — to receive $139,000 in payments on 13 separate registrations for aid. All the payments were sent to a single address.

Likewise, another person used a damaged property address located within the grounds of Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans to request disaster aid. Public records show no record of the registrant ever living in New Orleans.

Instead, records indicate that for the past five years, the registrant lived in West Virginia — at the address provided to FEMA, the GAO said."

Kind of destroys your faith in humanity doesn't it? Who are these people, who would use human suffering to divert aid money to enrich themselves? Is stealing from the government considered OK in some segments of society?
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Colo_Crawdad
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Lowell
The indication I get from that GAO report is that professional scammers who were not in any way victims of Katrina took advantage of a FEMA organization that was doing "a heckofa job" while not checking recipients at all. I only hope that the actions of the professional scammers who were not victims and the incompetence of FEMA administrators do not cause folks to refuse aid and comfort to future victims of natural disasters.
"WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US." --- Pogo
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tomdrobin
Member
FEMA made a lot of mistakes. Some such as this were IMO the result of public pressure to get the aid in there as fast as possible which entailed handing out $$$ quickly without looking carefully at the recipients.

They bought a bunch of RV's. I contracted to haul one down to Baton Rouge myself. From what I understand many are still sitting in lots because they can't find a place to set up the intended parks because of local citizins objections. The "not in my back yard", syndrome.
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