You can be sure to find the cockroaches of humanity coming out with their hands out whenever the government is handing out free money. We're not talking about those who lost everything to Katrina and Rita. We're talking about a vile form of human who stole this money and used it for things like sex-change operations. You know the type; they'd steal a wallet from an accident victim. Which is exactly what they did.
The government doled out as much as $1.4 billion in bogus assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, getting hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and even a divorce lawyer, congressional investigators have found.
The GAO concluded that as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in FEMA help to individuals after the two hurricanes was unwarranted.
Remember those handy debit cards FEMA handed out? Here's how they were spent:
_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.
One of the reasons for this debacle? No one bothered to check ID's. That's been taboo for some time now; we don't want to insult and offend people by making sure they are who they say they are. Wouldn't be pc.
"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.
Read the whole story here.
Posted by Mutti at June 13, 2006 06:13 PM | TrackBack
