Wednesday - June 14, 2006

How To Steal Billions

Want to be rich? Have free season football tickets? Get a sex change? Stock up your library of porn videos? Get away to the Caribbean for a few weeks? Yes, my friends, you can have all that if you follow our simple two-step plan. All it requires is a Republican controlled Congress and a Republican President ....

1- Wait for the next natural disaster, like a hurricane on the Gulf Coast. Within hours after the disaster, the bleeding heart Liberals and prominent Democrats will start finger-pointing and accusing the Republicans of being stingy, racist and hateful. The Democrats will call for resignations and go into full attack mode against FEMA and the administration. The Republicans and the administration will be shocked at the accusations and thrown into further confusion by liberal media who will further blast the administration. Falling back on the defensive, the administration and FEMA will begin bending over backwards to throw money at the disaster without bothering to verify where any money is spent - all to satisfy the Leftist critics who are screeching loudly.

2- Pick up your money. It’s that simple. At this point FEMA won’t care if you live in Alaska or a thousand miles away from the disaster or if you send in a dozen claims with bogus social security numbers. FEMA will throw money at anyone, anywhere in order to keep from being hounded to death by the Liberals and the MSM for being racist or stingy. Anyone can succeed with our plan, referred to as the “Liberal Blackmail Of Conscience Plan”. You see, the Democrats and bleeding-heart Liberals will do all the work for you. All you have to do is pick up your checks and before you know it you can divorce your wife and you’re off to Sweden as John and returning to America as Jean - all paid for by American taxpayers. Bon voyage!

FEMA Funds Spent On
Divorce, Sex Change
_{Jun 14, 3:38 AM (ET)}

WASHINGTON (MYWAY NEWS - AP) - Houston divorce lawyer Mark Lipkin says he can’t recall anyone paying for his services with a FEMA debit card, but congressional investigators say one of his clients did just that.

The $1,000 payment was just one example cited in an audit that concluded that up to $1.4 billion - perhaps as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in assistance expended after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita - was spent for bogus reasons.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also was hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and a sex change operation, the audit found. Prison inmates, a supposed victim who used a New Orleans cemetery for a home address and a person who spent 70 days at a Hawaiian hotel all were able to get taxpayer help, according to evidence that gives a new black eye to the nation’s disaster relief agency.

FEMA said it has identified more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after Katrina and Rita and has referred those cases to the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. The agency said it has identified $16.8 million in improperly awarded disaster relief money and has started efforts to collect the money. 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.

- More on wasted taxpayer’s money here ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/14/2006 at 11:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Corruption and Greed • Politics •  
• Comments (8) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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