News Commentary Today

Although this news is not unique, as numerous people have already been arrested for fraud regarding Hurricane Katrina and countless of people are currently under investigation, this was the most recent story I found in today's New York Times.

The police arrested a woman from Queens, NY yesterday, saying she had falsely claimed to be a victim of Hurricane Katrina and had taken thousands of dollars in aid from state and federal agencies. The 37 year old woman was charged by prosecutors with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny, the latest additions to a long rap sheet of fraud, arrests and legal disputes spanning from Mississippi to New York. Her most recent offense was trying to cash an expired check for $483.26, altered to read $3,483.26, at a check-cashing business.

Over the last two weeks, prosecutors have discovered that the women never lived in Biloxi, Mississippi as she claimed and had registered for public assistance at a Brooklyn address last July; none of the four children she claimed as dependents actually live with her. On the day Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, they said, someone used her New York State welfare benefits card in Brooklyn, NY

In an hour long conversation with a reporter from the New York Times, the woman insisted that her story was true. She said that she had documents from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) verifying her address in Biloxi, MS and that her children and husband but would be back at the hotel later that evening.

After searching her hotel room she said she could not find the documents. Her husband and children never arrived. She could not provide the names or phone numbers of even one friend, family or former co-worker in Biloxi who could verify that she lived there.

Yes, shame on this woman for taking advantage of a situation in which thousands upon thousands of people who have suffered in the Katrina disaster. But do you think this woman is an exception to the rule? Unfortunately, we live in a world where you really can't trust anyone you don't know. All this woman's case does is reinforce that you can't trust anyone who asks me for money until you check it out yourself.

Sometimes we want to help so much and we want to do the right thing, but just giving money to an individual or to an organization without checking into the matter first is simply negligence. It is a way to ease our guilt without taking the time and energy to really help. Instead of just giving people money, that they may lose, gamble away or misuse to by drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, give people directly the necessities that they claim they need.

I can't tell you how many times a beggar approaches me and tells me that they are hungry. When I offer to take them somewhere to buy them things you should see how many don't take me up on their offer. I remember a man who told me he needed to raise hundreds of dollars to pay for his mother's gravestone ("She should rest in peace..."). When I offered to take the man myself to purchase the whole thing he claimed he couldn't allow me to do that. When I accused him of being a liar and a fraud, he got upset and walked off in a huff.

Yes, the situations of some people must be pretty desperate if they have to sink to these unethical methods to raise money. What bothers me is that with all of the intelligence, it takes to be a fraud, why can't these people live an honest life. The answer is most probably because they are lazy. They think that fraud is the better method that will make more money faster and will less effort. It is a responsibility of the remainder of us, the hard working Americans, no matter where we may be on the economic scale, not to allow the shysters of this world to take advantage of us.

# posted by BFEEENTG @ 11:43 AM