Katrina Fraud

Hi, Lou. The Hurricane Katrina fraud cases just keep appearing in the news here. The other day my newspaper reported that 600 people in 19 states in the U.S. have been indicted, been convicted or have pled guilty to fraud in association with stealing taxpayer money by making false claims that they were affected by the storm. The most prevalent claim was for the $2000 emergency FEMA money received by anyone who lived in the stricken area who was under a mandatory evacuation order (My city ordered everyone to leave before the storm hit). The funds were supposed to be used by the applicant to pay emergency costs associated with leaving the area and for paying for hotel accommodations and other expenses incurred because the individual was ordered to leave home.
I got that assistance (and another $2300 from FEMA later), but I live here and had many expenses relative to evacuation (including Jane's plane fare and that of her grandmother and grandfather who accompanied her to Canada when evacuating). More than 1.6 billion dollars of fraudulent claims have been discovered so far. It is sad that such a terrible disaster brings out the worst in some people, so many stealing money that is supposed to go to people to help rebuild their homes and lives and pay for emergency expenses.
Wherever there is a disaster (remember the huge theft and mismanagement of donations associated with the SE Asian tsunami in 2004?) some people will try to exploit it for personal gain. Those people have a sense of entitlement, what psychiatrists call the "narcissism personality". They believe that they are owed what other people have to work for. It's the same mentality that makes people sue needlessly because he or she believes "I deserve money because I am a 'victim' ".
With a disaster as big as Hurricane Katrina and the incompetent Bush administration handing out checks to those affected, it is not surprising to hear that people who lived far away from the storm claimed to be residents of the area just to secure money. With so many legitimate applications (people applied by phone or on-line from anywhere they had evacuated) to sort out and quickly act on the government had little opportunity review claims and initially approved many fraudulent ones. But now the cheats are being caught and prosecuted. Here are four examples of the more clever ways some people stole the money.
* One woman who lives in far away Illinois and was unaffected by the hurricane filed an application under a phony name with a phony address in New Orleans, stating her two small children were swept away by the storm waters and that she was now unable to even look at children again, drive a car or function normally. She was caught when she used different ages for the imaginary children (in reality she has no kids) on several applications. That creature was sentenced to 4 years in prison recently, a more real disaster for her than as the hurricane for us. * A Florida man named Gary Kraser set up a "relief web site" during the storm which in one day took in $40,000 that were supposed to be used to pay for relief flights to the damaged sections of the city. Kraser said he was a pilot who had just seen the New Orleans disaster and was so shaken he wanted to fly back in his plane with medical supplies and to airlift stranded children out. But Kraser is not a pilot, has no plane and stole all the money he collected. He is also now serving a prison sentence for his theft.
* A Washington D.C. man named Jeffery Rothschild was just sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to collecting $100,000 from FEMA by submitting false claims on behalf of people he said were Hurricane Katrina victims. He told police he used New Orleans addresses on his applications that he found on the Internet.
* Here in New Orleans, two FEMA employees from Colorado took bribes from a food contractor in exchange for lying about the number of people served by the contractor. Both of the workers were paid $10,000 in cash by the contractor, They have been sentenced to 2 1/1 years in prison and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine for their theft. The number of fraud cases waiting for the prosecutor ranges in the hundreds, and it is estimated that the city of New Orleans could be rebuilt (which could take another 5 to 10 years, if at all) before all of the cheats are punished. Sooooooooo Hehe You still have time to file for your Hurricane Katrina assistance. You will either get a big check.....or a bigger jail cell if you it.....