Union Official Charged With Illegal Clinton Donations Indicted for Mail Fraud

Former Broward Teachers Union president allegedly steered illegal contributions to Clinton’s 2008 campaign

Federal authorities indicted the former president of a Florida teachers’ union on fraud charges on Thursday, even as he faces additional charges in his home state over allegedly illegal campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton.

The Justice Department charged former Broward Teachers Union (BTU) president Patrick Santeramo with two counts of mail fraud for his alleged role in embezzling more than $35,000 in payments from a local school district.

“It is alleged that after the BTU received the $80,000 payment from the School Board of Broward County, Santeramo authorized payments from the [union’s] Accountability Program account for himself and at least one other employee of the BTU to which they were not entitled,” DOJ said in apress release announcing the indictment.

Those funds were supposed to go toward training programs and leave time for teachers working on “accountability projects,” DOJ said. Instead, Santeramo pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in payments from Broward schools.

As he faces those charges, Santeramo is also awaiting trial in Broward County on 20 criminal counts, including racketeering, grand theft, fraud, money laundering, and charges involving illegal campaign contributions.

The latter involves alleged schemes to illegally direct tens of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, among other political efforts.

According to Florida authorities, Santeramo approached BTU colleagues beginning in 2007 asking them and their family members to contribute to Clinton’s campaign and that of then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink.

“Fraudulent reimbursements were used to conceal and launder these contributions by disguising them in the BTU books and records using false account classification designations such as: ‘miscellaneous expense, building expense, organizing, staff training, new education program, office supplies, lobbying, communications, negotiation and bargaining, other committees, steward training and special events,’” according to the criminal complaint against Santeramo.

Via: WFB

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Obama’s Top Health Care Nominee Was Once Embroiled in Medical Fraud Case

Andy Slavitt — President Obama’s choice to manage Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid — was linked seven years ago to a massive medical data fraud scheme that resulted in what was then the largest settlement ever by an insurance company.

If he is confirmed by the Senate, Slavitt will head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which manages the federal government’s three biggest health care programs. He will manage an estimated $1 trillion in benefits that are paid to millions of doctors, patients and hospitals.

Slavitt was CEO of Ingenix, a health data analytics firm at the center of a $50 million settlement in 2009 with then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and a $350 million settlement with the American Medical Association.

Cuomo and the AMA charged that Ingenix supplied databases to insurance companies that fraudulently calculated reimbursements for out-of-network medical services provided to policyholders, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.

Ingenix was owned by UnitedHealth Group, which did not admit to any criminal wrong-doing in the settlements.

The Ingenix scandal became public in February 2008 when Cuomo filed a “notice of intent to sue” Ingenix and UnitedHealth Group for “rigged” reimbursement rates that forced patients to overpay up to 30 percent for out-of-network doctors and hospitals.

Cuomo charged that Ingenix was running a “scheme” that sought “to defraud consumers by manipulating reimbursement rates.”

The AG told reporters, “This involves fraud in the hundreds of millions of dollars, affecting thousands and thousands of families. Too many people have been hurt. It has to stop.”

It was estimated that years of data manipulation by Ingenix affected as many as 110 million Americans — about one in three patients — who used doctors, labs or hospitals that were out of their insurance network.

Cuomo, who is now New York’s Democratic governor, estimated that patients who used out-of-network providers received between 10 to 28 percent less than they were entitled to because of Ingenix’s flawed data.

The $350 million was to reimburse doctors and patients shortchanged by Slavitt’s company. The $50 million went to establish a database of physician charges to be administered independently by a university. Ingenix also agreed to shutter its entire medical data analytics department.

Via: Daily Caller

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50 Years of Dysfunction: The Failures of Medicare and Medicaid

Fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation creating the nation’s two largest federal health entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid.

Medicare was created as a social insurance program for seniors and those with disabilities. It is financed primarily by payroll taxes collected during a recipients working life, and secondarily by personal and business income taxes.

Medicaid was designed as a welfare program to provide health care services to vulnerable low income groups. Medicaid is jointly financed by federal and state governments.

>>> On Thursday, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute are hosting an event with leading experts to reflect on the past 50 years and look ahead to the next. Details here.

Unfortunately at the age of 50, both Medicare and Medicaid continue to suffer from problems inherent to their structure and organization.

For example both programs:

• Limit choice
• Are overly bureaucratic and slow to change
• Suffer from crucial gaps in coverage and inefficient pricing
• Are plagued with losses through waste, fraud and abuse

Medicare is the largest purchaser of health care in the nation, covering roughly 55 million persons.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates Medicare’s total annual cost at $615 billion in 2015 and it is scheduled to exceed $1 trillion by 2023.

In other words, over the next 75 years American seniors are expecting tens of trillions of dollars of Medicare benefits that are not paid for. Today, working taxpayers, mostly through business and personal income taxes, fund an estimated 86 percent of the program’s annual cost.

For Medicaid, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) Office of the Actuary estimates that Medicaid’s total (federal and state combined) spending is expected to reach $529 billion in 2015, with 68.9 million enrollees.

Fifty years later, in their July 22, 2015 memo to Senate Budget Committee staff Medicare’s Office of the Actuary reports that Medicare’s debt – the program’s long-term unfunded liability- ranges from $27.9 to $36.8 trillion.

Whether it’s the lower or higher debt number, this year’s estimates are worse than last year’s by more than a $1 trillion.

For Medicaid, cost and enrollment is expected to continue to grow, in particular due to the expansion of the program under the Affordable Care Act.

By 2023, total Medicaid spending is projected to climb to $835 billion and enrollment will near 80 million.

The President’s answer is to cut Medicare payments to medical professionals and institutions.

Under Obamacare, the Medicare Trustees warn,

“By 2040, approximately half of hospitals, 70 percent of skilled nursing facilities and 90 percent of home health agencies would have negative total facility margins, ” adding that this creates the “possibility of access and quality of care issues for Medicare beneficiaries.”

For Medicaid, access and quality of care is already a top concern.

A recent CDC study found that only 68.9 percent of physicians would accept new Medicaid patients.

For the next 50 years, Congress could initiate transformative changes through a defined contribution ( “premium support”) financing in both programs, giving patients direct control over the flow of health care dollars and compelling health plans and providers to compete for patients’ dollars on a level playing field.

Intense competition among health plans and providers would stimulate innovation in benefit design and care delivery, improve patient outcomes and enhance patient satisfaction, and save serious money for both seniors and taxpayers alike.

Via: The Daily Signal

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HUD Staffer Fraudulently Charges $12k on Govt. Credit Card

During the government shutdown a couple of years ago, an employee at a cabinet-level agency long embroiled in scandal fraudulently charged thousands of dollars in personal items on his work-issued credit card.

Enraging as it may seem, it’s not all that surprising considering it involves the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a famously corrupt agency well known for a multitude of transgressions over the years. In this particular case a HUD staffer racked up nearly $12,000 on his agency credit card by charging personal items such as groceries, lodging, television cable, transportation and even prescription medications.

This occurred in the midst of the 2013 government shutdown caused by Congress’s failure to pass a spending bill. That paralyzed most functions of government, accounting for the second longest shutdown since 1980. The standstill caused a huge economic disruption and billions in lost output, according to a report published by the White House. Although federal employees were eventually compensated for the period of the shutdown, hundreds of thousands did not receive their full paychecks during that time. “The burden of delayed paychecks on federal workers and their families was significant and harmful,” the White House report states.

The HUD employee who went on a spending spree with his government credit card got busted but the agency didn’t bother to take action, according to the federal audit that exposed the scandal this month. The fraudulent purchases—$11,938 in total—were made during a relatively short period from August through October of 2013 so it was difficult for the agency not to notice. By January 2014 the fraud was confirmed but HUD failed to even reprimand the employee or report the wrongdoing. “This occurred because HUD’s existing purchase card policies did not include specific procedures to evaluate violations for purchase card program weaknesses and criteria to report violations,” the inspector general writes.

So, this bloated and notoriously corrupt agency gives its employees credit cards and has no measures to assess violations, which occur regularly throughout government. In this case the HUD staffer charged an astounding $7,357 in groceries, which raises red flags all on its own. He also charged $1,280 in drug stores and pharmacies and $488 on cable television for his home. The rest was spent on commuter transportation, hotels, restaurants and telecommunications equipment, according to the breakdown offered in the audit.

HUD’s scandals have been well documented throughout various administrations—both Republican and Democrat—and Judicial Watch has covered many of them. In fact, earlier this year JW reported that a HUD director who simultaneously ran a leftwing nonprofit changed agency policies to benefit her group. Her name is Debra Gross and for years she headed a crucial HUD policy office while she served as deputy director of a leftist organization called Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) that claims to work to “preserve and improve public and affordable housing through advocacy, research, policy analysis and public education.”

In 2011 a JW investigation found that the Obama administration violated the ban on federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) by giving the famously corrupt group tens of thousands of dollars in grants to “combat housing and lending discrimination.” The money, $79,819, flowed through HUD and clearly violated a law (Defund ACORN Act) passed by Congress in 2009 to stop the huge flow of taxpayer money that annually went to ACORN after a series of exposés about the leftwing group’s illegal activities.

Problems at the agency go way back. President George W. Bush’s HUD secretary, Alphonso Jackson, was ousted after the feds launched an investigation into his plots to enrich himself and his friends by giving them lucrative government contracts and Bill Clinton’s housing secretary, Henry Cisneros, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about payments to his former mistress. An influence-peddling scandal under Ronald Reagan led to the conviction of 16 people, including top aides to then HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce.

Via: Judicial Watch

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TRANSGENDER OREGON RESIDENT COLLECTED SOCIAL SECURITY UNDER MALE AND FEMALE NAMES

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon resident who transitioned to a woman more than three decades ago continued collecting Social Security disability checks under her male identity, fraudulently raking in $250,000.

Court records show Richelle McDonald was born Richard McDonald in 1945. In 1974, Richard claimed disability because he was unable to work after suffering a serious arm injury when hit by a San Francisco bus.

McDonald in the 1970s also applied for a separate Social Security number under the name Richelle. She worked under that name from the early 1980s until 2012 while continuing to collect disability payments as Richard.

McDonald pleaded guilty to Social Security fraud in December and was sentenced Monday to eight months of home confinement. She must also pay restitution.

The 70-year-old apologized in court.

Via: Breitbart

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Fraud crackdown sends illegal immigrant licenses plummeting in NM

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has tried to repeal the state's policy of issuing driver's licenses to illegals, but has had to settle for cracking down on fraud. (AP)

A crackdown on document fraud has sent the number of driver's licenses issued to illegal aliens in New Mexico plunging by 70 percent, while revealing that the state likely issued tens of thousands of bogus licenses after becoming the first state to adopt the controversial policy a dozen years ago.

Last year, New Mexico issued 4,577 licenses to foreign nationals, down sharply from the 2010 high of about 15,000. Officials in the administration of Gov. Susana Martinez, who opposes the policy but has been unable to get it repealed, say the huge drop came as soon as new procedures were implemented to identify fraudulent documents that had been submitted to obtain licenses.

“While this is encouraging news, Gov. Martinez still sides with an overwhelming majority of New Mexicans who believe we must repeal the dangerous law of giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, which has turned our state into a magnet for criminal activity,” said Mike Lonergan, spokesman for the governor.

“These people enter the country illegally then obtain a driver’s license through fraud and lies.”

- Bill Rehm, New Mexico state lawmaker

New Mexico became the first of 10 states to issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens in 2003, under then-Gov. Bill Richardson, who claimed it would cut down on uninsured drivers in the state. But while the policy's effect on public safety has been inconclusive, critics say it launched a cottage industry for criminals to sell fraudulent documents.

Last year, federal officials broke up a five-year operation -- which extended from New Mexico to New York -- that saw illegal immigrants from Georgia paying as much as $2,000 to obtain documents to secure a New Mexico driver’s license

Via: Fox News

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Scientific Fraud and Politics

Look who is lecturing Republicans about scientific truth.

ENLARGE

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

 A press release from the Union of Concerned Scientists recently hit our desk titled “Science Leaders Decry Congressional Attacks on Science and Science-Based Policy.” It flagged an op-ed in the journal Science that laments “a growing and troubling assault on the use of credible scientific knowledge.” Hmmm. Is this about science, or politics?

Since the scientists brought it up, which is the greater threat to their enterprise: the Republicans who run Congress, or the most spectacular scientific fraud in a generation, which was published and then retracted by the journal Science?

Last year UCLA political science grad student and maybe soon-to-be Princeton professorMichael LaCour released stunning findings from a field trial on gay marriage called “When Contact Changes Minds.” He found that a 20-minute conservation with a house-to-house canvasser could convert huge numbers of opponents into supporters, at least if the canvassers explained they were gay and told personal stories.

The study quickly became a media sensation, the most talked-about poli-sci paper in years, and it led gay-rights activists including some working on the Ireland referendum to retool their voter outreach.

The problem is that Mr. LaCour stands accused of faking everything from start to finish. Ph.D. candidates at Berkeley David Broockman andJosh Kalla tried but failed to replicate Mr. LaCour’s results. They then noticed unusual statistical irregularities in Mr. LaCour’s survey panel. He now says he pulled a Hillary Clinton and deleted his raw data. But the canvassing firm he claimed to have employed has never heard of the project—and there is no proof anyone was ever contacted, much less changed their minds.

Mr. LaCour denies wrongdoing and in a response paper assailed the motives of Messrs. Broockman and Kalla, whose violations of academic decorum include their decision to go public and “bypass the peer-review process.” That would be the same process that failed to catch Mr. LaCour’s non-findings at Science magazine.

Via: Wall Street Journal

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Democrats: The Party Of Fraud

The FTC recently cited several cancer charities for fraudulent practices.  The charities gave false promises and misused funds for personal use.

The managers of the Cancer Fund of America used the proceeds to take vacations, give themselves high salaries, new cars and directed very little to the actual treatment of cancer.

This comes just two weeks after it was revealed that the Clinton Foundation has been doing exactly the same thing, but an FTC case has yet to be opened. This sounds very much like the way Bill and Hillary Clinton use the money from their Clinton Foundation.  Only ten percent of the $252 million raised from 2011 to 2013 went to charitable grants.  Instead they give their employees elaborate salaries, pay for their travel on private jets, expensive hotel rooms and so on. 

The dollar amounts are there for everyone to see.  It is interesting to note that while private cancer charities are being pursued by the FTC, so far the Clintons have not been investigated.  Voters may wish to think about the different treatment Beltway Democrats receive from these Federal agencies.  It may be useful to keep in mind that Federal agency employees support Democrats in elections and that JFK started Federal unions with an executive order #10988.   Lawyers for the IRS gave money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.   Inquiring minds may begin to see a connection here
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The Clintons are not alone in their practice of misrepresenting their intentions to spend money.  Last August Lisa Madigan, the Democrat Attorney General of Illinois, announced that she won a lawsuit against Bank of America and Countrywide for bilking Illinois residents during the mortgage crisis.  This bank, she asserted, was misleading innocent mortgage applicants, who ended up losing a lot of money and often lost their homes.  She specifically stated that the monetary judgment of $300 million was intended for Illinois residents who were the victims of mortgage application fraud.

Via: American Thinker

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Accenture settles US fraud claims for $63.7 million

Global consulting giant Accenture has agreed to pay $63.7 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it defrauded the US government, US officials said on Monday.

"Accenture has agreed to resolve allegations that it received kickbacks for its recommendations of hardware and software to the government," the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

The firm also "fraudulently inflated prices and rigged bids in connection with federal information technology contracts," the statement said.

The lawsuit was brought against Accenture in the southern state of Arkansas by two whistleblowers who are entitled to receive part of the settlement under a US law designed to help ferret out fraud in government contracting.

Accenture, which employs more than 223,000 people around the world and had more than $21 billion in revenues last year, is one of the world's largest technology outsourcing and management consulting companies.

Via: Yahoo News

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Congress Turns Spotlight to Government Waste

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform highlighted wasteful federal spending on Thursday, holding a hearing that cited numerous examples of the practice, but few successes in eliminating it.

The hearing led with testimony from Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Carper (D., Del.) and Ranking Member Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), whoserecent release of the 2013 Wastebook identified over $30 billion in frivolous government spending.

Coburn said the problem of government waste is not caused by a lack of bipartisanship in Washington.

“My take is we get along too well,” he said. “We have presidents that come and go, Congresses who come and go, and we still have government waste. Why is that?”

“The problem isn’t that we don’t know what the problem is,” Coburn said, “it’s that we don’t act on the problem.”

The hearing exposed a lengthy list of examples, including $9 billion in tax breaks and loans to the wealthy that saw farm subsidies going to Ted Turner, Jon Bon Jovi, and former NBA player Scottie Pippen.

Thomas Schatz, the president of Citizens Against Government Waste, testified to the numerous overlap in federal programs. “Analysis is virtually non-existent” for the 47 job training programs across nine agencies, he said, which cost $18 billion in fiscal year 2009.

Thirteen agencies administered 209 science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs totaling $3.1 billion in FY 2010, though the United States still lags behind other countries in the STEM field.

Via: WFB:

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Target hackers stole encrypted bank PINs, could make fraudulent withdrawls

BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) — The hackers who attacked Target Corp and compromised up to 40 million credit cards and debit cards also managed to steal encrypted personal identification numbers (PINs), according to a senior payments executive familiar with the situation.

One major U.S. bank fears that the thieves would be able to crack the encryption code and make fraudulent withdrawals from consumer bank accounts, said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the data breach is still under investigation.

Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said “no unencrypted PIN data was accessed” and there was no evidence that PIN data has been “compromised.” She confirmed that some “encrypted data” was stolen, but declined to say if that included encrypted PINs.

“We continue to have no reason to believe that PIN data, whether encrypted or unencrypted, was compromised. And we have not been made aware of any such issue in communications with financial institutions to date,” Snyder said by email. “We are very early in an ongoing forensic and criminal investigation.”

The No. 3 U.S. retailer said last week that hackers stole data from as many as 40 million cards used at Target stores during the first three weeks of the holiday shopping season, making it the second-largest data breach in U.S. retail history.

Target has not said how its systems were compromised, though it described the operation as “sophisticated.” The U.S. Secret Service and the Justice Department are investigating. Officials with both agencies have declined comment on the investigations.

The attack could end up costing hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is unclear so far who will bear the expense.

While bank customers are typically not liable for losses because of fraudulent activity on their credit and debit cards, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Santander Bank said they have lowered limits on how much cash customers can take out of teller machines and spend at stores.

Via: Daily Caller

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USAID Programs Hit By Fraud, Corruption And Bid-Rigging Allegations

WASHINGTON –  USAID, the government agency in charge of distributing tax dollars to foreign aid projects, once again is being hit with allegations and audits exposing how fraud and corruption are undermining its programs.

 

Though the government says it's taking "steps" to address the problems, the multiple reports reflect a decades-long problem with how USAID money is administered and, critics say, how little has been done to fix it.

"There's a cult around foreign aid and those who question it," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told FoxNews.com.

One new investigation shows millions are being stolen and sold on the black market from money meant for malaria drugs in Africa.

The malaria initiative was set up to help fight the disease but has been hijacked by organized networks in the region that steal large amounts of the drug and resell it on the street.

The U.S. spent $2.5 billion between 2006 and 2012 on the President’s Malaria Initiative – a program created by George W. Bush in 2005 and led by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

Via: Fix News

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Bill O’Reilly: Project Veritas Video Captures Obamacare Navigators Committing Fraud (Video)

Bill O’Reilly led off “The Factor” tonight with video from James O’Keefe’s Project Veritasshowing Obamacare navigators committing fraud.

Undercover Veritas operatives captured the video in Texas. Navigators with the National Urban League instruct the applicants in how to commit fraud.

Via: Gateway Pundit

If Obama were a corporate executive, he'd be prosecuted for fraud

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor of distinction, has written an important column for National Review Online, laying out what would happen to a corporate executive who behaved as President Obama has, selling an insurance product. I laid out the case that Obama was guilty of fraud late last month, but McCarthy's expertise and careful explication are of a much higher level.

The entire article deserves to be read in its entirety. But here is a sample:

Fraud is a serious federal felony, usually punishable by up to 20 years' imprisonment - with every repetition of a fraudulent communication chargeable as a separate crime. In computing sentences, federal sentencing guidelines factor in such considerations as the dollar value of the fraud, the number of victims, and the degree to which the offender's treachery breaches any special fiduciary duties he owes. Cases of multi-million-dollar corporate frauds - to say nothing of multi-billion-dollar, Bernie Madoff-level scams that nevertheless pale beside Obamacare's dimensions - often result in terms amounting to decades in the slammer.

Justice Department guidelines, set forth in the U.S. Attorneys Manual, recommend prosecution for fraud in situations involving "any scheme which in its nature is directed to defrauding a class of persons, or the general public, with a substantial pattern of conduct." So, for example, if a schemer were intentionally to deceive all Americans, or a class of Americans (e.g., people who had health insurance purchased on the individual market), by repeating numerous times - over the airwaves, in mailings, and in electronic announcements - an assertion the schemer knew to be false and misleading, that would constitute an actionable fraud - particularly if the statements induced the victims to take action to their detriment, or lulled the victims into a false sense of security.

Via: American Thinker

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