June 16, 2006
Fumbling FEMA pays man $2,000 for damaged property… in a cemetery
This was one story that just couldn’t be missed. I don’t know if you guys know about this already, but boy, was I shocked when I heard this. These guys went on a shopping spree and their shopping list included diamonds, fireworks, a $200 bottle of champagne at Hooters, $300 worth of "Girls Gone Wild" videos, more than two months at a hotel in Hawaii, an all-inclusive, one-week Caribbean vacation and five season tickets to New Orleans Saints football! Are we talking about some rich, spoilt brat? No, about the people who were supposed to be displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita!
A recent audit by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)shows that the debit cards that were given to people displaced by the storms were used to buy all of the above. And one person even used the card for… a sex-change operation! And guess how much this disaster relief cost the government. The GAO found that up to $1.4 billion in disaster relief payments (nearly a quarter of the total amount paid out) by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were improper and potentially fraudulent.
The main reason for this was that the recipients provided incomplete or incorrect information when they registered for assistance. So far, FEMA said it has found more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after the hurricanes. And a GAO study that was provided to CNN showed that it only got worse – FEMA provided housing assistance to people who were not displaced, including at least 1,000 prison inmates.
According to investigators, over 15 percent of the disaster relief payments that were made by FEMA, went to people who submitted invalid registrations. According to the CNN report, in one case FEMA paid nearly $2,360 to a man whose allegedly damaged property was in a cemetery.
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