Disaster Fraud
Government Accountability Office releases two reports on FEMA disaster aid payments made in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita
By Cheryl Smith, Fri., June 23, 2006
The second report, "Expedited Assistance for Victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: FEMA's Control Weaknesses Exposed the Government to Significant Fraud and Abuse," was released June 16. It identifies problems with the federal government's disaster aid registration process. "For Internet applications, limited automated controls were in place to verify a registrant's identity. However, there was no independent verification of the identity of those who applied for disaster assistance via the telephone. GAO demonstrated the vulnerability inherent in the call-in applications by using falsified identities, bogus addresses, and fabricated disaster stories to register," an overview reads. "Other control weaknesses include the lack of any validation of damaged property addresses for both Internet and telephone registrations. Given these weak or nonexistent controls, it is not surprising that GAO's data mining and investigations showed substantial potential for fraud and abuse."
FEMA responded to the GAO's findings in a prepared statement. "This assistance is intended for disaster victims, and it is despicable that individuals fraudulently exploited FEMA programs or spent money on anything but emergency needs," said FEMA spokeswoman Aaron Walker. "[W]e have been aggressively overhauling our processes to eliminate processing errors and fraudulent abuse that individuals exploited during Katrina." To read the reports, see www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-844T and www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-655.
Examples of Payments Made to Improper and Potentially Fraudulent Registrations
Case 1
Amount: $109,708
8 individuals submitted 8 registrations using their own SSNs.
All 24 payments were sent to a single apartment.
4 individuals were members of the same household who were displaced to the same location. However, these individuals each received an expedited assistance and a rental assistance payment. According to public records, the other 4 individuals were not living at the damaged property at the time of the hurricane.
Case 2
Amount: $139,000
Individual received 26 payments using 13 different SSNsÑonly 1 of which belonged to the person.
Public records indicate that the individual did not reside at any of the 13 addresses claimed as damaged property addresses.
Public records also indicate that 8 of the 13 addresses did not exist or have public ownership records.
Case 3
Amount: $4,358
Registrant claimed a UPS store address as damaged property address to qualify for 2 payments for expedited assistance and rental assistance.
Case 4
Amount: $2,358
Registrant used an address in Greenwood Cemetery, New Orleans, as the damaged property address to qualify for one rental assistance payment.
Case 5
Amount: $2,000
Registrant used a New Orleans cemetery as the damaged property address to obtain one expedited assistance payment.
Source: GAO analysis and investigation of FEMA data.
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