Katrina Help: FEMA Swindled for $1 Billion

You've probably already heard about this atrocity, but the House of Representatives got the details yesterday. Here are some of the details.

A House of Representatives committee heard Wednesday about a litany of bogus claims and misuses of emergency payments that were intended for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year. In some eye-popping cases, prisoners who were jailed when the twin hurricanes barrelled into the southern US coast billed the government for rental assistance.

Gregory Kutz, managing director of special investigations at the General Accounting Office, which audits US government spending, said one billion dollars -- or 16 percent of hurricane assistance payments -- were fraudulent. "We believe our estimate understates the magnitude of the problem," he told shocked lawmakers.
Kutz said one individual stayed at a vacation resort in Orlando, Florida between September and November 2005 -- at a cost to taxpayers of 12,000 dollars, or 249 dollars a night. The fraudster also got 4,000 dollars in emergency rental payments. Another recipient relaxed in Hawaii for three months -- at a cost of 115 dollars per night -- even though that person lived in North Carolina, hundreds of miles north of the area devastated by the two hurricanes.