This is despicable-People are filing fraudulent claims with Red Cross/FEMA

[Maddy McCall]

Can you believe that there is a "Defraud Red Cross" ring that is filing these fraudulent claims with Red Cross?

Read this:

Authorities arrested three Mississippians on Thursday - the first of many, they say, to commit post-Katrina fraud. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Assistant U.S. Attorney John Dowdy of Jackson.

Authorities are searching for four other individuals and investigating an organized ring suspected of scamming checks from an American Red Cross service center.

The general rule of thumb for fraud is "3 to 5 percent of the money involved," Dowdy said. With Congress appropriating $60 billion toward rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, that could mean between $1.8 billion and $2 billion in fraudulently obtained funds.

Dowdy predicted the percentage will be higher than that because Katrina represents such "astronomical amounts of money."

Authorities charged Bryan Michael Beets of Vicksburg and Henry Jerome Armstrong and Markqus Antonio Brown, both of Meridian, with making false claims to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. If convicted, each faces a maximum five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Beets, Armstrong and Brown each signed up to receive $2,000 from FEMA, according to the complaints. Beets, who was on probation for illegal gaming, said he lived at a home damaged in Long Beach when he really lived in Vicksburg, the complaint said. "Beets was not a resident of the Gulf Coast during the period before or following Hurricane Katrina."

According to the complaint, people in Beets' Vicksburg apartment were heard celebrating later "because someone got a FEMA check."

more here: http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051007/NEWS05/510070311/1002/NEWS01
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This makes me angry, because those of us who WERE harmed by Katrina had to play a shell game to find a service center to get aid, while these buttwads who weren't harmed were filing false claims with FEMA and Red Cross and clogging the system. On top of that, now the Red Cross Service Center in Slidell, LA, has been closed so that officials can investigate fraud. That means that true victims who need the money can't get it, because the Service Center is closed.

What kind of evil exists in human hearts that would compel them to lie to get money that was intended for hurricane victims?

[Zuni]

1. every penny that goes to a non-victim

is a penny that doesn't go to help the people hurt by the storm

not only that, it makes it more difficult for honest people


edited for : :hi: Maddy

[Maddy McCall]

3. And people who want to donate to Red Cross won't because of the fraud.

I hope they make a public spectacle of those assholes.

:hi: Zuni!

[Shell Beau]

2. Things like this can bring out the scum of the universe!

I've heard of this and I think it is terrible. Especially since it is causing people, like you, hard times when they really need the help! :hug:

[Maddy McCall]

5. It took us three weeks to find a REd Cross center. Here's my story.

I was waiting in the line to receive the debit card, after the interview. I was sitting by a woman who was on the phone with her girlfriends in the line who hadn't been interviewed yet.

She was telling them, "You have to tell them that you have damage. Bad, bad, bad. You have to tell them that you had to evacuate. If you don't tell them these two things, then they won't approve you. Lie, lie, lie."

I was appalled. She gave this same speech to four or five different people who were in line waiting to be interviewed. She knew the questions that were being asked because she had been interviewed.

Anyway, I looked at her in shock, while she was on the phone, and I said, "I can't believe people like you. YOu are a terrible person and I hope karma bites you in the ass."

She evidently felt a tinge of shame and said, "Well, their houses were damaged; I was just letting them know that they have to tell them how bad."

And I responded, "Bullshit. You were telling them to lie."

She got up and walked off. I don't know if she was approved or not.

[Shell Beau]

9. Way to go!!!

I'm glad you let her have it. People like her make me sick!

[Maddy McCall]

10. Me, too.

I hope that her house is engulfed by a post-Katrina earthquake, and she'll have already spent her money on a plasma TV, that bitch.

[Shell Beau]

11. What is sad is that is probably what she would spend the money on.

It is really a shame.

[Maddy McCall]

12. That, or she'll cash out the card and spend it...

on beer and moon pies.

:D

[GOPisEvil]

4. I think those people should rot in jail, then in Hell.

They're taking money out of the hands of the truly needy.

[Maddy McCall]

6. So do I.

If the law doesn't get them, I hope Karma does. Bastards.

[nini]

7. "What kind of evil exists in human hearts"

With leaders like this - it's easy to understand how people can be so self centered and evil.


They're all pigs. It amazes me how low some people can go.

[Maddy McCall]

8. Amen.

I know people who signed up for food stamp cards at the mall who are big, rich Republicans with mega dollars, whose homes weren't harmed, and who were running generators throughout the storm.

One was a county supervisor's son, running a COUNTY-OWNED generator on COUNTY-OWNED GAS.

May they get theirs.

[Zuni]

13. there is something so sordid about defrauding charities

or stealing money people donated to a charity---just the idea of it is disgusting

it is one thing to steal, it is another to take money donated to help people

[jmowreader]

14. Yeah. I can believe it.

This shit happens every time a disaster happens.