Eideard

Most of the 1,800 people the feds believe obtained their citizenship fraudulently are Canadians of convenience who don’t even live here, according to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. “Most of these people, we believe, have never really lived in Canada and are still overseas,” he said Wednesday…

“We frankly have got them dead to rights with the proof that we have, and I don’t think a lot of these people want to go through a long, protracted public court battle where it’s clear they fraudulently obtained our citizenship. We expect most of them will just accept our decision and we’ll be able to do this in a fairly quick and low-cost way.”

The federal government revealed Tuesday it will revoke the citizenship of 1,800 people alleged to have obtained their Canadian citizenship fraudulently.

For the most part, it appears those people fudged or hired crooked immigration consultants to fudge for them their residency requirements…

Kenney warned the 1,800 are likely just the first tranche of people to have their citizenship revoked as the feds crack down on the crooked consultants.

He called it, “widespread residency fraud, where these consultants will sell packages for thousands of dollars, create a fake house or address or apartment, create fake utility bills and submit those to my ministry as proof of residency.”

In 2006, the federal government shelled out nearly $100 million evacuating 15,000 Canadian citizens from Lebanon during the Lebanon-Israel conflict.

It turns out many of them had rarely, if ever, set foot in Canada, prompting some to blast them as “Canadians of convenience…”

Since Confederation, Canada has only ever revoked 67 citizenships, 63 of them since 1977.

Sounds like this is overdue. If so, I have to ask how long did it take for someone to notice a practice this phony was going on? Like – who’s watching the store?

Yes, that is a helluva question for an American to ask, eh?

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

MADRID — Spanish police arrested three men suspected to be members of the hacker group Anonymous on Friday, charging them with organizing cyber attacks against the websites of Sony Corp, banks and governments — but not the recent massive hacking of PlayStation gamers.

Anonymous responded by threatening to retaliate for the arrests…

Spanish police alleged the three “hacktivists” helped organize an attack that temporarily shuttered access to some Sony websites. They were not linked to two massive cyber attacks against Sony’s Playstation Network that resulted in the theft of information from more than 100 million customers.

Police also accused the men of launching cyber assaults on Spanish banks BBVA and Bankia, and Italian energy group Enel SpA.

The arrests are the first in Spain against alleged members of Anonymous, following the detention of others in the United States and Britain. Police told Reuters all three men were Spanish and in their 30s. One worked in the merchant navy.

Anonymous is a loose grouping of self-proclaimed hactivists who frequently try to shut down the websites of businesses and other organizations that it opposes…

To date, the group has not been linked to crimes for financial profit…

Spanish police said the accused, who were arrested in Almeria, Barcelona and Alicante, were guilty of coordinated computer hacking attacks from a server set up in a house in Gijon in the north of Spain.

The police did not rule out further arrests.

Though their rationales and excuses play heavily on calling themselves “freedom fighters” methinks that’s the result of too much time in mommy’s basement playing war games. They accomplish about as much positive political change as the average graffiti “artist” – which means little or none. Vandalism rarely does more than despoil the landscape – and “freedom fighters” like this almost never share an identity or ideology with ordinary citizens around the world.

Faced with the prospect of hard time behind their role-playing, I expect some will flip and the arrests will continue.

As long as police officers have worn uniforms and carried badges, criminals have dressed like them to try to win the trust of potential victims. Now the impersonators are far more sophisticated, according to nearly a dozen city police chiefs and detectives across the country.

In South Florida, seemingly an incubator of law-breaking innovation, police impersonators have become better organized and, most troubling to law enforcement officials, more violent. The practice is so common that the Miami-Dade Police Department has a Police Impersonator Unit.

Since the unit was established in 2007, it has arrested or had encounters with more than 80 phony officers in Miami-Dade County, and the frequency has increased in recent months, said Lt. Daniel Villanueva, who heads the unit.

“It’s definitely a trend,” Lieutenant Villanueva said. “They use the guise of being a police officer to knock on a door, and the victim lowers their guard for just a second. At that point, it’s too late.”

He added that part of the problem was that it was easy for civilians to buy “police products,” like fake badges, handcuffs and uniforms. “The states need to lock this down and make impersonating a police officer a more serious crime because we’re seeing more people using these types of these things to commit more serious crimes,” he said…

Some police impersonators commit violent crimes like home invasions, car-jackings, rapes and, rarely, murders…

Other police impersonators, police chiefs and detectives say, masquerade as officers for more benign reasons, like trying to scare or impress someone. “Usually,” Detective Baez said, “the wannabe cop outfits their vehicles with police lights and fake insignias to fulfill some psychological need…”

Impersonating an officer is a misdemeanor in some states, though it is a felony in Florida. The charge’s severity, and punishment, increases if a criminal charged with posing as a police officer commits a felony. Several chiefs and detectives say the crime is not taken seriously enough by the justice system and the public. Often, the crime goes unreported, the police say.

Detective Hernandez, of Biscayne Park, Fla., said: “People minimize it. They just let it go. They won’t think about how dangerous this potentially can be. They just don’t see it.”

I agree. We’ve had a few of these in recent months here in New Mexico. One of the wannabe coppers had a buddy who was deputy sheriff – who helped him buy the real deal at a local police supply store. Absolutely illegal.

Way too likely some of these crooks are spending their energies in the commission of crimes – and given the size of our undocumentado population – a number of victims never report the crimes because they’re afraid of being deported. A handy-dandy convenience store for gangsters.

If Peter Budetti gets his way, the criminals who gorge on the U.S. healthcare system, bilking the government out of billions of dollars a year, will soon be on a much leaner diet.

As Washington’s point man on healthcare fraud, the 66-year-old Budetti knows there are no quick fixes to a mind-boggling mess that ranks as one of America’s top crime problems. But he has been working to develop new technological tools and a comprehensive, long-term strategy to rein in fraud since his appointment as director of Program Integrity at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last year.

Although fraudsters have had the run of the place for some two decades, life is about to get “an awful lot tougher” for them, Budetti told Reuters in a recent interview. He promised new measures to curb waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, the massive federal programs that provide healthcare for America’s elderly and poor, will soon pay big dividends…

Budetti, who is focusing as much on prevention as he is on detection, appears confident about clamping down on scammers. New computer programs and sophisticated “data detective” work are beefing up the arsenal of weapons to fight fraud, he said…

No state comes close to matching Florida as a haven for crooked healthcare businesses. Long known for its unsavory links with drug cartels, money launderers and swampland real estate deals, Florida is an obvious magnet for Medicare scammers since so many elderly Americans have retired to end their days in its famous sunshine.

As it happens, Florida is also leading a legal challenge by 26 states to overturn President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform. And Republican Governor Rick Scott, a fierce opponent of the law, has a controversial past as chief executive of a healthcare corporation that paid a record $1.7 billion in fines for defrauding Medicare and other federal programs. [No surprise to me]

A senior federal agent highlighted Florida’s role as “ground zero” for the crime in congressional testimony last month, saying it was now “accepted as a safe and easy way to get rich quick” in the state…

“The money involved is staggering. We see business owners, healthcare providers and suppliers, doctors, and Medicare beneficiaries participating in the fraud. We also see drug dealers and organized criminal enterprises defrauding the system…”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said last month tougher enforcement was already starting to pay off with $4 billion recovered last year.

Overdue. RTFA. Several pages detailing the corruption – which IMHO cannot exist without collusion from state politicians. With a creep like Governor Rick Scott running things, I foresee a heckuva battle between Feds trying to close down the crime – and Scott working to protect his country club buddies.

A group of burglars padlocked the gates to a French police station car park before carrying out a raid on a supermarket.

The gang then smashed through plate glass windows and stole laptop computers and mobile phone from the Carrefour store in the town of Feurs, near Lyon, France.

Police took ten minutes to cut their way through the locked gates of the car park – arriving at the scene to find the robbers had fled…

A Feurs police spokesman added: “An investigation is under way, but it does seem as if we are dealing with a very well prepared gang of professional thieves.”

The burglary at around 2.30am on Monday comes three months after another armed gang padlocked police station gates before a bank raid near Paris.

They also blocked an access road to the bank with a burning car before using explosives to blow open a cashpoint machine at the BNP-Paribas bank in Aulnay-sous-Bois.

The four gunmen armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles then stole several hundred thousand euros in cash before fleeing on two high-powered motorbikes, and were never caught.

Looks like it’s getting easier than ever to acquire high-powered weapons in Europe.

Ah, the cultural influences of America spread worldwide.

Three large pharmaceutical firms have agreed to pay a total of $421 million to settle allegedly inflated claims against the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

Abbott Laboratories, Roxane Laboratories and B. Braun Medical Inc. have agreed to settle with the government to resolve claims that they engaged in a complicated scheme to report inflated prices for many pharmaceutical products.

Assistant Attorney General Tony West said the settlements stem from allegations the firms jacked up the prices of the “average wholesale price” upon which the government relied for determining payments.

West said the settlements bring to a record $9 billion the amount of recoveries for fraud in the two years of the Obama administration. More than half of that has been for health care related fraud.

But, don’t worry guys – Republicans and teabaggers will fix all that for you in the next Congress.

It is hard to believe, as the holidays approach yet again amid economic hard times, but Congress looks as if it may let federal unemployment benefits lapse for the fourth time this year.

Lame duck lawmakers will have only one day when they return to work on Monday to renew the expiring benefits. If they don’t, two million people will be cut off in December alone. This lack of regard for working Americans is shocking. Last summer, benefits were blocked for 51 days, as senators in both parties focused on preserving tax breaks for wealthy money managers and other affluent constituents.

This time, tax cuts for the rich are bound to drive and distort the debate again. Republicans and Democrats will almost certainly link the renewal of jobless benefits to an extension of the high-end Bush-era tax cuts. That would be a travesty. There is no good argument for letting jobless benefits expire, or for extending those cuts…

Nor do jobless benefits bust the budget. Just the opposite. They do not add to dangerous long-term deficits because the spending is temporary. And because they support spending and jobs, they contribute powerfully to the economic growth that is vital for a healthy budget. Extending the Bush high-end tax cuts would be budget busting, because they are likely to endure, adding $700 billion to the deficit over 10 years. Tax cuts for the rich provide virtually no economic stimulus, because affluent people tend to save their bounty…

President Obama should pound the table for a clean, yearlong extension of unemployment benefits, and should excoriate phony deficit hawks — in both parties — who say that jobless benefits are too costly, even as they pass vastly more expensive tax cuts for the rich.

As we move into the next 2-year cycle of corruption, lies and deception that defines our Congress, the lack of bi-partisanship between cowards and crooks, political hacks governed by the golden rule of “what must I now do to get re-elected” – we all get to witness how little these thugs care for working people. Especially the unemployed.

Take the time to Google your way through congress.org and other sites that track the day-by-day record of America’s only native criminal class. Remember who the crucial offenders are in your own neck of the prairie. Call ‘em out on their failures and faux accomplishments.

Picking up the pieces

The victim of a home invasion fought off two attackers early Thursday by shooting both in the head, killing one, police said.

One of the intruders, Darreon Carter, 18, died in a Tulsa hospital. The other, Daniel Holman, 23, is in critical condition, police said…

Capt. Travis Yates said the woman was walking through a dark parking lot about 3:50 a.m. at the Brighton Park apartments in the 4800 block of South Darlington Avenue after a trip to a fast-food restaurant. As she opened her apartment’s door, the men demanded money and forced their way inside.

The woman initially cooperated, but when one intruder told her to undress, she pulled a snub-nosed revolver from her purse and shot him, police said.

A struggle for the gun broke out, and her boyfriend tried to help, police said.

Although she took blows to her head, the woman was able to shoot the other intruder. She fired five shots in all, Yates said.

“It seemed to be a courageous act, protecting their home and their life,” he said. “They were shaken up, but it was sort of impressive — they weren’t hysterical…”

Medics took both men to St. Francis Hospital, where Carter died. Holman remains in critical condition with bullet wounds to his head and stomach, police said.

We call this castle law in the Rockies. Your home is your castle. Attack at your own risk.

Two armed robbers, one of whom left a T-shirt bearing his photo and name at the scene of the crime, and their female accomplice were captured early Sunday morning just minutes after firing multiple rounds during a robbery at a Rutherford County bar, police said.

Twenty-two-year-old Kendell M. Swader…his 20-year-old girlfriend, Whitney Elliott…and accomplice Antonyo O. Roper, 18, all of Murfreesboro, have all made bond…

The victims told police that two males and a female were hanging around The Spot…from about 1 a.m. Sunday until it closed two hours later…

During that time, the men came in to buy drinks and one of them removed a T-shirt bearing his photo and family name and tattoos. He left his T-shirt lying in the bar.

When the bar closed, the three were waiting in the parking lot and reportedly re-entered the bar armed with a .40-caliber pistol and took both the cash drawer from the register and a bank money bag full of cash.

Despite getting the money, one of the two men said “shoot them” as they were leaving. The victims ducked and heard four shots. More shots were fired into a truck driven by a woman who pulled up attempting to get a tag number off the suspects’ four-door brown car. That victim had already called 911 and saw the suspects flee outbound on Woodbury Pike.

A regional “be on look out” was immediately broadcast by RCSO Communications. A Woodbury police officer spotted the vehicle and began chase, asking for assistance from Cannon County deputies.

The car was stopped, and a .40-caliber Glock was recovered along with cash and other evidence linking them to the bar robbery.

The only thing these dummies didn’t do was leave behind a note with their home address. Presuming they can write.

Prosecutors have announced criminal charges against four lawmakers over alleged abuse of parliamentary expenses, in a dramatic twist to a scandal that has rocked British politics.

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, said charges of false accounting would be brought against three Labour members of the elected House of Commons (MPs) and one Conservative member of the unelected House of Lords…

The men deny wrongdoing but have already been barred from standing for Labour at the next vote.

Lord Hanningfield, the Conservative peer who faces charges, also protested his innocence but immediately resigned as a business spokesman for his party and his membership was suspended, a party spokesman said.

The four men were due to appear in court on March 11 and if convicted, could face a jail sentence of up to seven years.

The expenses scandal erupted in May after the publication of leaked parliamentary expenses showing how lawmakers claimed for everything from flatscreen TVs to massage chairs.

What goes around, comes around. What major political parties in the industrial West have escaped the sleaze bug?

Wouldn’t it be great if we could come up with a vaccine against corruption, cronyism and graft?