Katrina Spending and Abuse
Weekend Rewind
The GAO has done some investigation into the fraud and abuse with regard to FEMA assistance to Katrina victims, what they’ve found is rampant problem, even worse then many expected. This was covered to death this week on talk radio but here are some highlights if you missed it:
The GAO said it was 95 percent confident that improper and potentially fraudulent payments were much higher – between $600 million and $1.4 billion.
The investigative agency said it found people lodged in hotels often were paid twice, since FEMA gave them individual rental assistance and paid hotels directly. FEMA paid California hotels $8,000 to house one individual – the same person who received three rental assistance payments for both disasters.
In another instance, FEMA paid an individual $2,358 in rental assistance, while at the same time paying about $8,000 for the same person to stay 70 nights at more than $100 per night in a Hawaii hotel.
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.
“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.
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.
Now surely I expected some fraud and abuse in the first couple weeks while things were getting sorted, but come on were talking a billion dollars worth here! Oh but that’s not a lot right? The government spends trillions for sure, but one billion dollars broken out to the average taxpayer is nearly 20 bucks. I don’t know about you but I want my Andrew Jackson back. What ruffles my feathers even more then FEMA’s ineptitude in tracking money, is the degenerate scum that prey on aid programs. This is why I usually suggest we leave things like this to private groups who are much more careful with donated money then the government ever is with your tax dollars.
An editorial in the LATimes has a slightly different view.
I should add though to be fair the Dept. of Justice does appear to be taking the issue seriously with wide spread prosecutions. I mean in north Georgia alone I’ve found a boat load of cases in the court system in just the last few months, if you’d like to take a read go HERE and just search on the page for “Katrina”, you’ll be surprised how many entries turn up for just one small district.
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