fraud – Moe Lane

Texas subpoenas Planned Parenthood records from 2010 on.

Wonderful thing, a subpoena.

Texas health officials showed up at five Planned Parenthood facilities Thursday morning with subpoenas for patient and employee records, according to the clinics.

Officials with the inspector general’s office at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission went to two facilities in Houston as well as clinics in Dallas, San Antonio and Brownsville. The Brownsville center does not perform abortions.

…but the Brownsville center may have indulged in Medicaid fraud. Certainly the state of Texas thinks that the rest of Planned Parenthood may have indulged in Medicaid fraud. And why would they think that? Well, I don’t know: maybe it’s because back in 2013 Planned Parenthood got caught doing precisely that: Continue reading Texas subpoenas Planned Parenthood records from 2010 on.

“HealthCare.gov does not appear to be set up to detect fraud.”

I don’t know whether it matters if you score this as ten out of eleven, or ‘merely’ five: either way… Houston, we have a problem.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says 11 counterfeit characters that its investigators created last year were automatically re-enrolled by HealthCare.gov. In Obama’s terms, they got to keep the coverage they had.

Six of those later were flagged and sent termination notices. But GAO said it was able to get five of them reinstated, by calling HealthCare.gov’s consumer service center. The five even got their monthly subsidies bumped up a bit, although GAO did not ask for it. The case of the sixth fake enrollee was under review.

The GAO’s sardonic conclusion of the problem (I don’t know if it’s a direct quote or not) can be found in the title of this post. But let us not pretend that successful fraudulent applications represent a flaw in the system: they are, in fact, part of the system. Lest we forget (which is admittedly hard to do): Obamacare is a government program. In fact, it’s a government program that the current government is absolutely desperate to have succeed. The only way to keep the whole thing from collapsing into a fetid heap of delayed verification is to approve any application that does not have HELLO, MY NAME IS [NAME] AND I WISH TO COMMIT TAX FRAUD scrawled across it in big, shaky red letters.

Huh. The GAO should have done exactly that as a test, just to see how many of those would have gotten through. Although, to be fair I don’t imagine that more than two out of eleven. Maybe three. Four if circumstances were perfectly aligned.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: For extra horrified laughter: the administration informed GAO that the company running Healthcare.gov aren’t set up to detect fraud, but that there’s no meaningful level of fraud anyway so that’s all right. No, I’m not sure how they’re determining that, either. Maybe Tarot cards?

PPS: Good news, though: “The fake enrollees also got some perplexing instructions from HealthCare.gov. Eight of the 11 were asked to submit additional documentation to prove their citizenship and identity. But the list of suitable paperwork detailed documents for verifying income instead.” So at least anybody out there committing tax fraud will have to deal with just as much government ineptitude as the rest of us…

Washington Post’s The Fix concedes that universal voter registration is linked to fraud.

This is one heck of a Freudian slip, honestly.

“For one thing, they would probably seize on the chance to attack her for favoring another government mandate and federal encroachment on states, and also to argue that government mandated registration could produce other types of fraud.” – Bolding mine, and I’m kind of pleased that we’re just admitting for once something that everybody already knows: which is, that there’s inherently just something in mandatory voting registration that doesn’t hate a fraud. I feel that it’s good for Left-pundits to reach this plateau, as George Carlin might have said. It gives all an opportunity to advance the debate.

Moe Lane

PS: No, by the way. I think that we can avoid mandated voter registration on the federal level for some time to come. States with full Democratic control are perfectly free to set their own policies in this, of course… although finding states that fit that description has been getting harder and harder to do, of late.

Iowa Democrats mulling ensuring election fraud in 2016 primary caucuses.

Otherwise known as ‘voting over the Internet.’

Iowa Democrats are mulling a slate of ways to boost participation in their next presidential caucuses, including permitting Internet voting, a controversial method that would mark the first time in history the web is utilized to cast an official ballot preference for president.

I look forward with some interest to see how that experiment works out for them. And for the screams of horror and despair, of course.

Moe Lane

PS: I do not expect Mickey Mouse or [whatever Howard Stern suggests] to win the 2016 Democratic Iowa caucus. I simply no longer think that such a thing can be ruled out.

PSA: #Obamacare drawing con-men like rotten meat draws flies.

Don’t believe me? Then maybe you’ll believe that notorious right-wing Tea Party rag The New York Times:

To the list of problems plaguing President Obama’s health care law, add one more — fraud.

With millions of Americans frustrated and bewildered by the trouble-prone federal website for health insurance, con men and unscrupulous marketers are seizing their chance. State and federal authorities report a rising number of consumer complaints, ranging from deceptive sales practices to identity theft, linked to the Affordable Care Act.

Madeleine Mirzayans was fooled when a man posing as a government official knocked on her door. Barbara Miller and Maevis Ethan were pitched by telemarketers who claimed to work for Medicaid. And Buford Price was almost caught by another trap: websites that look official but are actually bait set by fly-by-night insurance operators.

Continue reading PSA: #Obamacare drawing con-men like rotten meat draws flies.

#rsrh CA Dem campaign treasurer arrested* for mail fraud.

Well, this sounds interesting:

A prominent Democratic campaign treasurer who works for federal, state and O.C. lawmakers including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Rep. Loretta Sanchez and state Assemblymen Lou Correa and Jose Solorio has been arrested by the FBI on suspicion of mail fraud, The Orange County Register has learned.

U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Thom Mrozek confirmed Saturday afternoon that Kinde Durkee of Burbank-based Durkee and Associates, was arrested by the FBI on a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento. Special Agent Steve Dupre of the bureau’s Sacramento office said she was arrested in connection with her position as a campaign treasurer.

Continue reading #rsrh CA Dem campaign treasurer arrested* for mail fraud.

#rsrh Democrats involved in LA housing payola?

Via Instapundit, it’s time for another game of…

NAME!
THAT!
PARTY!

Two high-level state officials have frozen nearly $150,000 in campaign contributions raised for them by a low-income housing developer now accused of bilking government agencies.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer and state Controller John Chiang said they have put the money into separate accounts while they await the outcome of a federal probe into Advanced Development and Investment Inc [ADI]. The company has built dozens of subsidized apartment complexes up and down the state with taxpayer money.

Continue reading #rsrh Democrats involved in LA housing payola?

Breaking: CURRENT(?) DSCC national finance chair arrested for bank fraud.

Hassan Nemazee helped raise 115 million for the DSCC in 2006.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Hot Air readers.

Hassan Nemazee was more recently a heavy donor and bundler for both the Clinton and Obama Presidential campaigns, bringing in over half a million for the new President; he was also a major bundler for the Presidential Inaugural.

NY Businessman Charged With $74 Million Bank Fraud Against Citigroup

A New York man was charged with allegedly defrauding Citigroup Inc. (C) out of $74 million in loans.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan and the Federal Bureau of Investigations say Hassan Nemazee, with residences in Manhattan and Katonah, N.Y., fraudulently applied for the loans for Nemazee Capital Corp., of which he is chairman and chief executive.

Federal prosecutors contend Nemazee obtained the money by giving the banking giant “numerous documents that purported to establish the existence of accounts in Nemazee’s name at various financial institutions containing many hundreds of millions of dollars,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “In fact, those were fraudulent and forged documents.”

And I originally had him down as ‘former’ national finance chair for the DSCC, except that I’m seeing no signs that he quit the job (screenshot here).

See also AoSHQ & @AmandaCarpenter. [Also, Dan Riehl, who’s doing some more research on the topic.]

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Rep. Jeff Flake’s anti-earmark resolution up today.

As you know, it’s in response to the PMA meltdown/outrage (see here for some background posts):

Rep. Flake targets earmarks amidst PMA controversy
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), the House’s most vocal critic of pork barrel spending, is trying to shake the ethics committee into action on the link between earmarks and campaign contributors.

Flake has seized on the public corruption investigation of PMA Group, a once-powerful lobbying force that has disintegrated in the wake of an FBI probe into fraudulent campaign donations to numerous members of Congress.

In the past 24 hours, Flake has highlighted earmarks in the omnibus appropriations bill for PMA clients, written a scathing op-ed to The New York Times about Congress’s pay-to-play practices and offered a privileged resolution on the House floor that would force the House ethics panel to scrutinize the connection between earmarks and campaign cash and report back to the full body in two months.

Continue reading Rep. Jeff Flake’s anti-earmark resolution up today.