NYT- FEMA Will Try to Recoup Millions Distributed for Hurricane Relief

WASHINGTON, March 17 — Acknowledging that it wrongly distributed tens of millions of dollars in hurricane relief last year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Friday that it would try to recoup aid from thousands of individuals or families who fraudulently or otherwise wrongly collected money.

Officials at the agency said it was a routine step taken after any disaster because in the rush to distribute emergency aid, benefits were occasionally paid twice to the same family or to people who were ineligible.

"In every disaster there are just some people who are bad apples who attempt to take advantage of the programs," said Donna Dannels, the acting deputy director of disaster recovery at FEMA.

But auditors examining the $6.8 billion in disaster assistance distributed last year to 1.7 million households after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma said FEMA was to blame for much of the abuse because of a woefully inadequate accounting system that left it vulnerable to fraud.

more:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/18/politics/18fema.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


This takes the cake, blaming "bad apples" for their own incompetence. :eyes:

it took to get those folks aid you think they could have gotten it right.

It was amazing that anyone could figure out the system in order to get ANY aid.

I'll bet that the Feds will pick on the small guy and leave the Halliburton graft alone.

they will blame the lack of assistance to some - on those few bad apples rather than their own incompetence, or rather than blame Halliburton and other contractor fraud.

STILL have not gotten the help they need.

Does Halliburton do Collection Services?

in Iraq?

They start out saying "wrongly distributed tens of millions of dollars".

Later you find auditors are looking at $6.8 BILLION.

That $6.8 BILLION supposedly went to 1.7 million households.

Of that 1.7 million households they expect to "seek the return of aid from 2 percent to 3 percent of approved applicants." - Using 3%, doesn't that come out to 51,000 households? Well, maybe if they all went to the extreme of using 15 SS #s for a measly $41,000 they could be looking at some serious change. :eyes:

They aren't willing to estimate how much they might recoup, but make the claim, "it could be up to $100 million". (Reminds me of those weight-loss ads - guaranteed to loose UP TO 30 lbs in 30 days, meaning anywhere between 1 ounce and 30 lbs)


Way at the end of the article we get this little tidbit "Officials from FEMA and the treasury could not say Friday how successful the government had been at recovering excessive or unjustified payments from past disasters."

That got me thinking, oh yeah like let's look back at all the money doled out across the nation for 9-11. I couldn't find the article I was originally thinking about, but this one touches on some of the abuses. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/371361p-315964c.html Fat cats milked Ground Zero

The $$$$$ they wasted sending ice trucks on faux missions,the trailers still empty,never utilized,the photo-ops that also wasted time and money--yet here they are whining about "payback".:mad: