View Comments |
Print This Post
|
by Jim Kouri |
December 11th, 2006
FEMA's Individuals and Households Program (IHP) and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) purchase card program have resulted in significant fraud, waste, and abuse.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed homes and displaced millions of individuals. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to respond to this disaster, the Government Accountability Office's previous investigation identified significant control weaknesses — specifically in FEMA's Individuals and Households Program (IHP) and in the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) purchase card program — resulting in significant fraud, waste, and abuse.
The GAO's latest investigation addressed whether FEMA provided improper and potentially fraudulent rental assistance payments to registrants at the same time it was providing free housing via trailers and apartments; duplicate assistance payments to individuals who claimed damages to the same property for both hurricanes Katrina and Rita; and IHP payments to non-US residents who did not qualify for IHP.
To address these objectives, GAO analysts data-mined and analyzed FEMA records and interviewed city officials, university officials, and foreign students. GAO investigators also traveled to Louisiana and Texas to inspect selected property items and to investigate improper housing payments to individuals living in FEMA-provided housing.
FEMA continued to lose tens of millions of dollars through potentially improper and/or fraudulent payments from both hurricanes Katrina and Rita. These payments include $17 million in rental assistance paid to individuals to whom FEMA had already provided free housing through trailers or apartments.
In one case, FEMA provided free housing to 10 individuals in apartments in Plano, Texas, while at the same time it sent these individuals $46,000 to cover out-of-pocket housing expenses. In addition, several of these individuals certified to FEMA that they needed rental assistance.
FEMA made nearly $20 million in duplicate payments to thousands of individuals who claimed the damages to the same property from both hurricanes Katrina and Rita. FEMA also made millions in potentially improper and/or fraudulent payments to nonqualified aliens who were not eligible for IHP.
For example, FEMA paid at least $3 million to more than 500 ineligible foreign students at four universities in the affected areas. This amount likely understates the total payments to ineligible foreign students because it does not cover all colleges and universities in the area. FEMA also provided potentially improper and/or fraudulent IHP assistance to other ineligible non-U.S. residents, despite having documentation indicating their ineligibility.
FEMA's difficulties in identifying and collecting improper payments further emphasized the importance of implementing an effective fraud, waste, and abuse prevention system.
For example, GAO previously estimated improper and potentially fraudulent payments related to the IHP application process to be $1 billion through February 2006. As of November 2006, FEMA identified about $290 million in improper payments and collected about $7 million. GAO's previous work on the DHS purchase cards also showed significant problems with property accountability.
Of 246 items the GAO investigated that FEMA purchased for hurricane relief efforts using DHS's purchase cards, 85 items — or 34 percent — are still missing and presumed lost or stolen.
COPmagazine@aol.com
Visit their website at: http://jimkouri.us
Responses to "Fraud and Waste Plague Aftermath of Katrina & Rita"
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Ever wonder why it takes time to obtain a loan? It’s because lenders want to make sure you qualify and have a high probability of repaying the loan. If lenders didn’t do this, unqualified people would be given money, and none of them would repay it. This situation is no different – it’s like shoveling money into the street. It is nothing new; it’s been going on in various forms for over 45 years.
There was a natural disaster (conspiracy theories notwithstanding) that people demanded the government respond to immediately, if not sooner. There was no time to verify eligibility, and the government had to rely on individuals’ statements. HOWEVER, the reason fraud, waste, and abuse happen is because the government does not hold individuals responsible for their actions. I use to work for the government and saw many cases of un-punished outright THEFT through the credit card program. I never once encountered a case where the individual was even so much as required to pay back the money. Not punishing is the same as rewarding, and activity that is rewarded is likely to be repeated. So, if the government wants to prevent this from happening again, it must find and prosecute those who made false claims (I’m sure they were required to sign a statement that says something like, “I certify the above statements made by me are true and correct and understand that knowingly making a false statement is subject to fine, imprisonment, or both.”).
Comment by sedonaman | December 13, 2006
Well, we do owe it to all the people in New Orleans because they were too stupid (or too attracted to the idea of post-disaster looting) to leave the city after being told explicitly that a category 5 hurricane was coming and WOULD destroy the city. Then that mean old president Bush wouldn't rewrite the constitution so he could exceed his authority and send in military disaster recovery despite the negligence and incompetence of the governor of the state and mayor of the city.
I've never seen such waste in my entire life. And it was entirely because the PC brigade decided to make a natural disaster into a racial issue. In 2004 Florida was hit with 4 hurricanes in a single season. An email-friend that I know there is still missing parts of the roof in his apartment complex 2 years later. His situation isn't all that unusual. Strangely, he didn't get a $5,000 Visa card, 2 years rent money along with a free mobile home, and free food and welfare. He also didn't get the benefit of looting thousands of dollars worth of goods in the wake of the hurricane before the police showed up. I don't think the government has ever responded quite so generously to a hurricane, of which we usually see several per year, in history. My children will be still be paying for the Katrina victims' ancestors a hundred years from now. On top of all that, we taxpayers also get to rebuild the levees in New Orleans at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars so that we can continue to sustain a city 15 feet below sea level until the next time this happens, and then we can do it all over again. Thank goodness for our rich uncle Sam.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | December 14, 2006