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Your FEMA cash at work: NFL tickets, erotica

Tax dollars intended for hurricane victims were spent in many, um, other ways.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 14, 2006

WASHINGTON - The government doled out as much as $1.4-billion in bogus assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, getting hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and even a divorce lawyer, congressional investigators have found.

Prison inmates, a supposed victim who used a New Orleans cemetery for a home address, and a person who spent 70 days at a Hawaiian hotel all were able to wrongly get taxpayer help, according to evidence that gives a new black eye to the nation's disaster relief agency.

Federal investigators even informed Congress that one man reportedly used FEMA assistance money for a sex change operation.

Agents from the General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, went undercover to expose the ease of receiving disaster expense checks from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The GAO concluded as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in FEMA help to individuals after the two hurricanes was unwarranted.

The findings are detailed in testimony, obtained by the Associated Press, that is to be delivered at a hearing today by the House Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations.

To dramatize the problem, GAO provided lawmakers with a copy of a $2,358 U.S. Treasury check for rental assistance that an undercover agent got using a bogus address. The money was paid even after FEMA learned the undercover applicant did not live at the address.

FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker said Tuesday that the agency makes its highest priority during a disaster "to get help quickly to those in desperate need of our assistance."

FEMA said it has identified more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after Katrina and Rita and $16.8-million in improperly awarded disaster relief money.

The GAO, however, said improper and potentially fraudulent payments were much higher - between $600-million and $1.4-billion.

The investigative agency said it found people lodged in hotels often were paid twice, since FEMA gave them individual rental assistance and paid hotels directly.

In one instance, FEMA paid an individual $2,358 in rental assistance, while also paying $8,000 for the person to stay 70 nights at more than $100 per night in a Hawaii hotel.

FEMA also could not prove that 750 debit cards worth $1.5-million even went to Katrina victims, the auditors said.

Among the items purchased with the cards:

n An all-inclusive, one-week vacation in the Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic.

n Five season tickets to New Orleans Saints professional football games.

n Adult erotica products in Houston

n Dom Perignon champagne in San Antonio.

n A divorce lawyer's services in Houston.

"Our forensic audit and investigative work showed that improper and potentially fraudulent payments occurred mainly because FEMA did not validate the identity of the registrant, the physical location of the damaged address, and ownership and occupancy of all registrants at the time of registration," GAO officials said.

FEMA paid millions of dollars for expedited housing assistance to more than 1,000 registrants who used names and Social Security numbers belonging to state and federal prisoners.

FEMA paid about $5.3-million to registrants who gave a post office box as their damaged residence, including one who got $2,748 for listing a post office box as the damaged property.

The GAO told of an individual who used 13 different Social Security numbers - including the person's own - to receive $139,000 in payments on 13 separate registrations for aid. All the payments were sent to a single address.

Likewise, another person used a damaged property address of Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans to request disaster aid.

[Last modified June 14, 2006, 07:12:42]