Tag: Theft

Insurers will fight to protect their Medicare fraud

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This year, for the first time, a majority of seniors eligible for Medicare will be on privatized Medicare Advantage plans. Now, the insurance companies raking in giant profits from these for-profit plans are mounting a pressure campaign and planning to sue the government to protect years of overpayments they’ve extracted from Medicare…

What’s more, federal audits have found Medicare Advantage plans systematically overbilling the public — mostly by billing as if patients are sicker than they really are, a scheme known as “upcoding.” Officials estimate the private plans collected $650 million in overpayments from 2011 to 2013…

The Biden administration is expected to finalize a rule next month to try to recoup some of these overpayments — but Medicare Advantage insurers are threatening to sue if the rule moves forward as written, according to Stat News. If insurers sue, it could further delay the government’s efforts to claw back excess payments stretching back more than a decade, as well as future overpayments.

The health insurance industry argues that regulators should allow for some level of payment errors — and should only apply new rules to audits moving forward, instead of retroactively punishing past misconduct.

The stuffed shirts aren’t just worried about their golden goose finally being leaned and cooked. They believe they should be exempt from compensating taxpayers, subscribers, for their earlier thievery. Not a surprise. Not worth condoning either.

Empty folders ain’t the problem. Trump could’ve made copies instead of removing original documents

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FBI agents found four dozen empty document folders marked “CLASSIFIED” during their raid last month of former President Donald Trump’s residence at his Mar-a-Lago club, a newly unsealed court file revealed Friday…

The FBI also found another 42 empty folders marked “Return to Staff Secretary/Miliary [sic] Aide,” during the Aug. 8 raid, which was authorized to search for government documents removed from the White House when Trump left office in Jan. 2021, the filing said…

The bombshell revelations raise the prospect that the DOJ has not yet recovered the documents that would have been in the empty folders.

That theft would be a crime.

The detailed inventory made public Friday was one of two court filings related to the FBI raid that were ordered unsealed by Judge Aileen Cannon…

The other document unsealed Friday is titled, “Notice of Investigative Team of Status of Review,” and notes that the criminal probe did not end with the raid.

As lawyers involved with all sides of this issue release analysis, statements, over time…the American public will have further opportunity to come to their own conclusions about Trump’s removal of evidence from firsthand use in proceedings yet to come.

Yes, his behavior is creepy and passes in my mind as evidence of trying to hide or destroy evidence of crimes.

I expect that the American body politic will continue to increase the percentage of folks who will vote in reality and in the arena of American politics to condemn these practices by Trump and his flunkies.

Practices likely to be ruled illegal by appropriate agencies.

Feds out to bust crooks who stole Billion$ from Payroll Protection Plan

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Estimates ranging from $100 billion to over $400 billion have been stolen from Covid-19 unemployment and other pandemic relief programs. The United States Labor Department reported that nearly $90 billion in unemployment benefits alone could have been paid improperly due to fraudulent activities, according to PBS NewsHour.

…Investigations have resulted in the seizure of millions of dollars and have assisted in the return of approximately $2 billion…

The story sounds like a script for an upcoming movie, starring George Clooney, in which an international collective of bad actors from around the world…and right here at home, wantonly looted unemployment funds earmarked for out-of-work Americans by perpetrating fraudulent claims. Unknowingly, naive Department of Labor workers sent out checks to bad guys.

Anyone who’s gone through the hassles of collecting unemployment checks will snicker at that bullshit last sentence.

It seems, in hindsight, political leaders knew about the possibility of fraud and theft, especially as the Payroll Protection Plan, a program to bailout small businesses, was co-opted by large corporations and other entities that were not entitled to participate.

The politicians turned a blind eye, as they felt money needed to get into the hands of the folks who were out of work and took the gamble that everything would work out well. Gene Sperling, a point person for President Joe Biden’s stimulus plan, blamed the fraud on Donald Trump’s administration, calling it “one of the most serious challenges we inherited…”

Big corporations stole funds from programs meant to aid ordinary working folks? Shock and amazement!

Gangs have a fun weekend in San Francisco – robbing and looting

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Drivers blared their horns Saturday evening as dozens of thieves carrying luggage and bags darted from a Nordstrom department store near San Francisco and hopped into cars waiting for them outside. All but three of the 80 or so looters escaped, police said…

The spectacle Saturday night was one of several incidents of looting and shoplifting reported at high-end retail stores around the Bay Area over the weekend.

On Friday night, thieves broke into at least 10 stores, including a Louis Vuitton in San Francisco’s Union Square. And on Sunday night, officers in Hayward, about a 30-minute drive from San Francisco, were investigating after a group of smash-and-grab burglars destroyed glass cabinets and stole merchandise from a mall jewelry store.

…Nordstrom employees and shoppers in Walnut Creek were ambushed by approximately 80 thieves who entered the store in unison just before 9 p.m., police said.

Jodi Hernandez, a reporter with NBC Bay Area, was outside the store and recorded footage of what she dubbed the “flash mob robbery.” Hernandez said about 25 cars blocked the street in front of Nordstrom before the occupants stormed inside and then returned to the vehicles with stolen merchandise.

Jim Dudley, a retired San Francisco Police officer who now teaches criminal justice at San Francisco State University, said the burglaries might be the result of a “perfect storm” created by corporations and policymakers in California, where many retailers have “no chase” policies regarding shoplifters and where at least $950 of merchandise must be stolen for state prosecutors to press felony charges.

The weekend’s looting and shoplifting incidents “seem to be coordinated, with tools, lookouts, vehicles for getaway and swarming tactics used by criminals with intent to plunder,”

You know if these gangs were Left-wing political groups…just planning peaceful flash mob demonstrations…absolutely everything about the planned events would be known in advance by the local coppers. They all get sufficient funds to pay for informants inside any political organization standing to the left of Fox News. Just another line item in the budget.

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Gift Article

“The work continues…”

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Cyrus Vance, Jr
Widline Cadet/NewYorker

On February 22nd, in an office in White Plains, two lawyers handed over a hard drive to a Manhattan Assistant District Attorney, who, along with two investigators, had driven up from New York City in a heavy snowstorm. Although the exchange didn’t look momentous, it set in motion the next phase of one of the most significant legal showdowns in American history. Hours earlier, the Supreme Court had ordered former President Donald Trump to comply with a subpoena for nearly a decade’s worth of private financial records, including his tax returns. The subpoena had been issued by Cyrus Vance, Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney, who is leading the first, and larger, of two known probes into potential criminal misconduct by Trump. The second was opened, last month, by a county prosecutor in Georgia, who is investigating Trump’s efforts to undermine that state’s election results.

Vance is a famously low-key prosecutor, but he has been waging a ferocious battle. His subpoena required Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars U.S.A., to turn over millions of pages of personal and corporate records, dating from 2011 to 2019, that Trump had withheld from prosecutors and the public. Before Trump was elected, in 2016, he promised to release his tax records, as every other modern President has done, and he repeated that promise after taking office. Instead, he went to extraordinary lengths to hide the documents. The subpoena will finally give legal authorities a clear look at the former President’s opaque business empire, helping them to determine whether he committed any financial crimes. After Vance’s victory at the Supreme Court, he released a typically buttoned-up statement: “The work continues.”

Sock it to him, Cy!

Trump Admin caught stealing from healthcare fund for firefighters who responded to 9/11

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Maisel, Todd, NY Daily News

The Trump administration has secretly siphoned nearly $4 million away from a program that tracks and treats FDNY firefighters and medics suffering from 9/11 related illnesses, the Daily News has learned.

The Treasury Department mysteriously started withholding parts of payments — nearly four years ago — meant to cover medical services for firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics treated by the FDNY World Trade Center Health Program, documents obtained by The News reveal.

The payments were authorized and made by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which oversees the program. But instead of sending the funds to the city, the Treasury started keeping some of the money.

Now that the theft is public, the inevitable textbook of lies and excuses are starting to roll out. Some of them are truly fantastic fiction of the worst kind. None of them are believable. Even Trump’s persistent incompetence hardly begins to cover this.

NY Attorney General Moves For Fraud Investigation into NRA

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The attorney general of New York took action Thursday to dissolve the National Rifle Association following an 18-month investigation that found evidence the powerful gun rights group is “fraught with fraud and abuse.”

Attorney General Letitia James claims…she found financial misconduct in the millions of dollars and that it contributed to a loss of more than $64 million over a three-year period.

The suit alleges that top NRA executives misused charitable funds for personal gain, awarded contracts to friends and family members, and provided contracts to former employees to ensure loyalty.

The NRA said in a statement that the legal action was political, calling it blah, blah, blah.

They used all the predictable rightwing and conservative boilerplate. As will their attorneys. More good money thrown after bad; hard-earned buck$ mostly earned by members. Though no doubt there is a surplus of corporate gifties in the kitty.

I’ve had many friends who have been members of the NRA over the years. Me, too, more than once. They used to have the best education program on gun handling and safety in the country. Dunno if that still exists in useful form, anymore.

But, corruption begets little or no benefit to members or any target demographic. As mis-leadership moved further and further to the Right, the treasury moved more often into the pockets and lifestyle of the rich and famous executives of the organization. I presume one of the options before the court as this action nears an end will be throwing the crooks out; reforming activities to something more closely resembling a historic model. Who knows?

The execs made the NRA a political organization. Now, the process of sorting out the good from the bad will be as political as anything else can be in the GOUSA.