Hurricane Aid For Her-a-Change Aid

Bogus Hurricane Aid May Top $1.4 Billion

As much as $1.4 billion in Hurricanes Katrina & Rita aid to victims was spent fraudulently, including a sex change operation, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO concluded that as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)help to individuals after the two hurricanes was unwarranted.

FEMA handed out debit cards to those claiming to be victims of the hurricanes. But like the typical nightmare Federal bureaucracy, FEMA didn't bother checking on the validity of those claims for aid. GAO provided lawmakers with a copy of a $2,358 U.S. Treasury check for rental assistance that an undercover agent got using a bogus address. The money was paid even after FEMA learned from its inspector that the undercover applicant did not live at the address. Among the items purchased with the cards:

. a sex change operation.

· 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.

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 wrongly get taxpayer help.

GAO 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.

FEMA also could not establish that 750 debit cards worth $1.5 million even went to Katrina victims, the auditors 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.

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.

"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.

In response, a FEMA spokesman had the gall to state, "Even as we put victims first, we take very seriously our responsibility to be outstanding stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we are careful to make sure that funds are distributed appropriately."

Thank you Federal government for wasting tax-payer dollars. $1.4 billion could have gone a long way to help the homeless, the sick, & children. Betcha there will no effort to recollect the money stolen, nor will there be any prosecutions, nor will there be any firings at FEMA of the idiots who failed to watchdog where the money was going. In a bureaucracy there is either collective guilt or no guilt.

This brings to mind the Senate plan to legalize 12 million illegal aliens in the country. The bureaucracy needed to administer, investigate & enforce this will be ponderous indeed. The billions upon billions of dollars that will be stolen from that agency would be better used to provide brain changes for all the idiot Federal employees who allow this fraud to happen.