During the Katrina and Rita disasters, I blogged frequently about what appeared to massive amounts of fraud going on. Reuters is now reporting that the dollar loss has topped 1 Billion dollars, here.
From government employees to fake charities, it appears a lot of people took advantage of those less fortunate than them in their "time of need."
And not very much of the money seems to have been recovered despite well publicized efforts.
Sadly enough, the public awareness of all the fraud is also likely to make it harder for victims in future disasters. The bottom line is that people - who take advantage of others in their time of need - should suffer severe consequences.
Perhaps, a lack of consequences (common in fraud schemes) is the reason this occurred? To prevent this from happening in the future, we need to make sure there are severe consequences for those committing the fraud, as well as, those who enable it by a lack of oversight.
After all, we were in a state of emergency, when these disasters occurred.
I'm afraid the amount of fraud we've seen come out of these disasters - which affected a lot of innocent people - is a sad commentary on our society as a whole.
Let's hope we do a little better next time.
To read my previous posts on this matter, link here.
Friday, December 08, 2006
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1 comment:
Hey Ed! This sort of thing will only get worse due to the PC crowd making crude accusations against the Govt. instead pointing to the real problems such as you are doing here. Keep up the good work and God willing voices such as yours will cut through the noise and clutter to hearing ears.
- If all else fails perhaps the Second Coming will interupt (or at least slow down) criminal activity when crisis and tragedy hits.
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