Full Version: FEMA Fraud!
Yes, and more to the point, where is the honesty and self-control on the part of the recipients of this misplaced largesse? Where are the apologists for this taxpayer-funded giveaway now? Perhaps one of the moderators will have the time to link to the spirited discussion on this topic just after this permissive program was announced in Katrina's wake. It was a bad idea then and it has proved to be an even worse one now. :mad:
I sustained a lot of damage in Fort Lauderdale after Hurricane Wilma in October. One week a team from FEMA went up and down the street inviting folks to sign up for a FEMA inspection, so I did so. A representative showed up, spent an hour commenting on my color scheme and antique French furniture, had a cup of coffee, took two cell phone calls, and then handed me his digital camera and asked me to take his picture on my balcony with the Atlantic Ocean in the background because none of his friends in Colorado would believe his tale of the view and surroundings otherwise. I snapped the photos, asked him didn't he need to photograph the two completely devastated bedrooms and bathrooms, the collapsed ceiling, missing doors and shattered windows, and he said "no, I just wrote it up." About ten days later I got a letter from FEMA saying I was ineligible for any assistance because I had private insurance (I was completely honest about telling them), and if that did not cover my losses completely I should get in touch with them again. Needless to say, my own insurance company is grudgingly covering only about 40% of my $60,000 in damage, but I prefer to just absorb the rest of it myself rather than have to deal with the dolts from FEMA again.
:mad: ARRRGGGHHH!!!
Please don't forget the hard-working, good people who donate time to rescue operations! While the organization may be corrupt, there are many who volunteer selflesssly.
I have a good friend who was on the ground after 9/11 doing highly dangerous work telling rescuers where it was safe to go, and how safely to go into risky areas.
On the other hadn, his stories of FEMA waste and non-existant planning would make your hair stand on end.
But don't forget the volunters!
Nat
I have a good friend who was on the ground after 9/11 doing highly dangerous work telling rescuers where it was safe to go, and how safely to go into risky areas.
On the other hadn, his stories of FEMA waste and non-existant planning would make your hair stand on end.
But don't forget the volunters!
Nat
A public service was offered to the community, and people took advantage of it? Whatever next. The "oversight" was in thinking that people wouldn't do it. When there's money to be made (and spent), nobody cares what's "right". Conservatives at least don't pretend otherwise.
The thing that pisses me off the most? That someone spent $400 on Girls Gone Wild videos. In other words, they didn't just spend their government money on porn. They didn't just spend their government money on straight porn. They spent their government money on AWFUL straight porn!
LXN
The thing that pisses me off the most? That someone spent $400 on Girls Gone Wild videos. In other words, they didn't just spend their government money on porn. They didn't just spend their government money on straight porn. They spent their government money on AWFUL straight porn!
LXN
FEMA sucks, but this financial problem stems from a very difficult situation. Had FEMA been strict in verifying needs before releasing money, people would be screaming about how callous FEMA is for making people suffer for so long.
Many things can be blamed on FEMA, but not this. I say throw the fraudulent into jail. Then next time, people will know not to take advantage. Strict oversight at the time of the crisis will be overly harsh on the people who really do need relief.
Many things can be blamed on FEMA, but not this. I say throw the fraudulent into jail. Then next time, people will know not to take advantage. Strict oversight at the time of the crisis will be overly harsh on the people who really do need relief.
Maybe if "Brownie" hadn't done such a good job, none of this would have happened. This event, Katrina, and, to a lesser degree, Rita, will both go down in history as one of the largest debacles ever encountered by the US Government. It remains such a painful embarrassment and a glaring example of the ineptitude of the Bush Administration.
[ June 14, 2006, 11:07 PM: Message edited by: millerbeach ]
[ June 14, 2006, 11:07 PM: Message edited by: millerbeach ]
QUOTE
orsino4:
Many things can be blamed on FEMA, but not this. I say throw the fraudulent into jail.
Indeed. For every government program, especially ones where money is doled out like candy, there will always be scumbags who rip off the taxpayers.
Many things can be blamed on FEMA, but not this. I say throw the fraudulent into jail.
FEMA you're doing a heck of a job!
still! 
More news on the FEMA front: the fraud, mismanagement and incompetence are now alleged to equal $2 billion or. And it sure in the hell wasn't the evacuees running up the tab...
QUOTE
June 27, 2006
'Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, June 26 — Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.
A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.
There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.
And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.
The tally of ignoble acts linked to Hurricane Katrina, pulled together by The New York Times from government audits, criminal prosecutions and Congressional investigations, could rise because the inquiries are under way. Even in Washington, a city accustomed to government bloat, the numbers are generating amazement.
\"The blatant fraud, the audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste — it is just breathtaking,\" said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
***
The waste ranged from excessive loads of ice to higher-than-necessary costs on the multibillion-dollar debris removal effort. Some examples are particularly stark.
The $7.9 million spent to renovate the former Fort McClellan Army base in Anniston, Ala., included fixing up a welcome center, clinic and gymnasium, scrubbing away mold and installing a protective fence between the site and a nearby firing range. But when the doors finally opened, only about 10 people showed up each night, leading FEMA to shut down the shelter within one month.
The mobile homes, costing $34,500 each, were supposed to provide temporary housing to hurricane victims. But after Louisiana officials balked at installing them inland, FEMA had no use for them. Nearly half, or about 10,000, of the $860 million worth of units now sit at an airfield in Arkansas, where FEMA is paying $250,000 a month to store them.
***
The most disturbing cases, said David R. Dugas, the United States attorney in Louisiana, who is leading a storm antifraud task force for the Justice Department, are those involving government officials accused of orchestrating elaborate scams.
One Louisiana Department of Labor clerk, Wayne P. Lawless, has been charged with issuing about 80 fraudulent disaster unemployment benefit cards in exchange for bribes of up to $300 per application. Mr. Lawless, a state contract worker, announced to one man he helped apply for hurricane benefits that he wanted to \"get something out of it,\" the affidavit said. His lawyer did not respond to several messages left at his office and home for comment.
\"The American people are the most generous in the world in responding to a disaster,\" Mr. Dugas said. \"We won't tolerate people in a position of public trust taking advantage of the situation.\"
Two other men, Mitchell Kendrix of Memphis and Paul Nelson of Lisbon, Me., have pleaded guilty in connection with a scheme in Mississippi in which Mr. Kendrix, a representative for the Army Corps of Engineers, took $100 bribes in exchange for approving phantom loads of hurricane debris from Mr. Nelson.
In New Orleans, two FEMA officials, Andrew Rose and Loyd Holliman, both of Colorado, have pleaded guilty to taking $20,000 in bribes in exchange for inflating the count on the number of meals a contractor was serving disaster workers. And a councilman in St. Tammany Parish, La., Joseph Impastato, has also been charged with trying to extort $100,000 from a debris removal contractor. Mr. Impastato's lawyer, Karl J. Koch, said he was confident his client would be cleared.
'Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, June 26 — Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.
A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.
There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.
And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.
The tally of ignoble acts linked to Hurricane Katrina, pulled together by The New York Times from government audits, criminal prosecutions and Congressional investigations, could rise because the inquiries are under way. Even in Washington, a city accustomed to government bloat, the numbers are generating amazement.
\"The blatant fraud, the audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste — it is just breathtaking,\" said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
***
The waste ranged from excessive loads of ice to higher-than-necessary costs on the multibillion-dollar debris removal effort. Some examples are particularly stark.
The $7.9 million spent to renovate the former Fort McClellan Army base in Anniston, Ala., included fixing up a welcome center, clinic and gymnasium, scrubbing away mold and installing a protective fence between the site and a nearby firing range. But when the doors finally opened, only about 10 people showed up each night, leading FEMA to shut down the shelter within one month.
The mobile homes, costing $34,500 each, were supposed to provide temporary housing to hurricane victims. But after Louisiana officials balked at installing them inland, FEMA had no use for them. Nearly half, or about 10,000, of the $860 million worth of units now sit at an airfield in Arkansas, where FEMA is paying $250,000 a month to store them.
***
The most disturbing cases, said David R. Dugas, the United States attorney in Louisiana, who is leading a storm antifraud task force for the Justice Department, are those involving government officials accused of orchestrating elaborate scams.
One Louisiana Department of Labor clerk, Wayne P. Lawless, has been charged with issuing about 80 fraudulent disaster unemployment benefit cards in exchange for bribes of up to $300 per application. Mr. Lawless, a state contract worker, announced to one man he helped apply for hurricane benefits that he wanted to \"get something out of it,\" the affidavit said. His lawyer did not respond to several messages left at his office and home for comment.
\"The American people are the most generous in the world in responding to a disaster,\" Mr. Dugas said. \"We won't tolerate people in a position of public trust taking advantage of the situation.\"
Two other men, Mitchell Kendrix of Memphis and Paul Nelson of Lisbon, Me., have pleaded guilty in connection with a scheme in Mississippi in which Mr. Kendrix, a representative for the Army Corps of Engineers, took $100 bribes in exchange for approving phantom loads of hurricane debris from Mr. Nelson.
In New Orleans, two FEMA officials, Andrew Rose and Loyd Holliman, both of Colorado, have pleaded guilty to taking $20,000 in bribes in exchange for inflating the count on the number of meals a contractor was serving disaster workers. And a councilman in St. Tammany Parish, La., Joseph Impastato, has also been charged with trying to extort $100,000 from a debris removal contractor. Mr. Impastato's lawyer, Karl J. Koch, said he was confident his client would be cleared.
Is this really a big deal? After all, this shit has been going on for decades. People ripping off the government. Big deal.
Hell, in Illinois, it's expected of you to do this.
Hell, in Illinois, it's expected of you to do this.
QUOTE
fantomas:
...And it sure in the hell wasn't the evacuees running up the tab...
No one ever said they were ALL of the problem, just PART of the problem. There's enough blame here to go around for just about everyone associated with this continuing mess. The bigwigs and the little guys equally deserve prosecution.
...And it sure in the hell wasn't the evacuees running up the tab...
I must admit to a degree of confusion. Wasn't there a hew and cry that our beloved government stood by and do nothing as these victims died? Now, we are suppose to feel some degree of outrage that $2 billion (out of a trillion dollar budget) was somehow not used as it was meant for? As if welfare was always applied for the uses it was for. Excuse me, but I believe it is an axiom of government that anytime you give money away there will always be a certain percentage of the recipients who are either unqualified or who will waste the money on fripperies.
On who in their right mind gets upset over $2 billion - I spent that much on beluga caviar last month or did I have my fleet of Bentleys serviced - can't be bothered with the small change.
On who in their right mind gets upset over $2 billion - I spent that much on beluga caviar last month or did I have my fleet of Bentleys serviced - can't be bothered with the small change.
Mary of Teck, your Klimt avatar image isn't coming through anymore.
BTW, given your apparent wealth, did you bid against Ronald Lauder on the Klimt portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer that he recently purchased for the Neue Galerie in New York? I believe the painting of the beech forest also is or will be up for sale soon.
BTW, given your apparent wealth, did you bid against Ronald Lauder on the Klimt portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer that he recently purchased for the Neue Galerie in New York? I believe the painting of the beech forest also is or will be up for sale soon.
how much did you send for katrina relief fantomas?
Why should it matter to you how much money Fantomas did or didn't send? The fact is, the federal government dropped the ball badly on those folks down there. Quit baiting. Quit hating.
QUOTE
aep9@cox.net:
how much did you send for katrina relief fantomas?
Actually as much as I could afford, not that it matters.
how much did you send for katrina relief fantomas?
Then there are the headlines on MSNBC right now which says that those Fema trailers are filled with cancer causing chemicals, and so toxic its not even funny. Nice.
no it did not, it said that the sierra club said this. it has a vested interest in keeping people out of new orleans. but you are right who wants ...those people in town anyway. last week galitoires was full and none of those guys was living in a traylor.
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