Medical fraud

[silverscreenselect]

So what is your overall point, sss? There is no fraud in the federal government? Go for it.

More precisely, the fraud that DOGE "uncovered" occurred several years back and has been identified, investigated (many of the "suspicious" findings in the DOL reports were not actual instances of fraud), and prosecuted. This isn't fraud committed by the federal government or its employees; it's fraud committed on the various state unemployment bureaus. Identifying fraud is just the first step. You then have to prosecute, recoup what money you can, and send people to jail. You also have to put safeguards in place to reduce the possibility of additional fraud.

The federal government has no direct role in administering the unemployment insurance process. That's up to the states, and they were caught woefully shorthanded and underprepared in the wake of COVID and the flood of fraudulent claims filed by desperate people or those seeing an opportunity for a fast buck.

If you had read the DOL reports and literature, most of which were written during the Biden administration, you would see that federal and state governments have taken steps to reduce the types of fraud that arose a few years back.

DOGE accomplished nothing with their "shocking" report other than to grab headlines in right-wing media and give gullible people like you the impression that they were rooting out previously unknown fraud, when everything they reported was well known years ago and being remedied.

[silverscreenselect]

Oh, poor baby.

Here's just from June

Flock:

While we're on the subject of waste, perhaps you could point me to the tweets that identified DOGE savings that resulted from cutting wasteful spending and eliminating unneeded positions at the National Weather Service and related agencies in the last six months?

[flockofseagulls104]

Oh, poor baby.

Here's just from June

Flock:

While we're on the subject of waste, perhaps you could point me to the tweets that identified DOGE savings that resulted from cutting wasteful spending and eliminating unneeded positions at the National Weather Service and related agencies in the last six months?

LOL. You are getting into BJ country now.

[earendel]

So what is your overall point, sss? There is no fraud in the federal government? Go for it.
That's the argument you want to have after all the stuff that has happened even in just the past two weeks? Is that all you got?

Pretty wide and very shallow.

Pardon me for interjecting, but why does it have to be black or white - no fraud or rampant fraud? I don't think there's anyone, and I mean anyone who would believe that there was absolutely no fraud. If I may presume to speak for SSS, he is saying that what DOGE uncovered was not new - it had been discovered previously. Did DOGE uncover any new fraud? Quite likely. But to say that fraud hadn't been discovered until DOGE came on the scene is absurd.

[Beebs52]

So what is your overall point, sss? There is no fraud in the federal government? Go for it.
That's the argument you want to have after all the stuff that has happened even in just the past two weeks? Is that all you got?

Pretty wide and very shallow.

Pardon me for interjecting, but why does it have to be black or white - no fraud or rampant fraud? I don't think there's anyone, and I mean anyone who would believe that there was absolutely no fraud. If I may presume to speak for SSS, he is saying that what DOGE uncovered was not new - it had been discovered previously. Did DOGE uncover any new fraud? Quite likely. But to say that fraud hadn't been discovered until DOGE came on the scene is absurd.

It's the doing something about it that's different.

[BackInTex]

So what is your overall point, sss? There is no fraud in the federal government? Go for it.
That's the argument you want to have after all the stuff that has happened even in just the past two weeks? Is that all you got?

Pretty wide and very shallow.

Pardon me for interjecting, but why does it have to be black or white - no fraud or rampant fraud? I don't think there's anyone, and I mean anyone who would believe that there was absolutely no fraud. If I may presume to speak for SSS, he is saying that what DOGE uncovered was not new - it had been discovered previously. Did DOGE uncover any new fraud? Quite likely. But to say that fraud hadn't been discovered until DOGE came on the scene is absurd.

It's the doing something about it that's different.

Doing something and really caring about it. And thus the subtext of my post (which seemed to be misinterpreted by several).

[silverscreenselect]

It's the doing something about it that's different.

If you read about a bank robbery, that doesn't mean that banks aren't trying to improve their security measures or that police don't try to catch the robbers. The DOL has been doing something about UI fraud. They just didn't hold go around tooting their own horns they way Trump, Musk, and DOGE have. Although most of the crimes are state crimes, the federal government does get involved.

More Than 2,000 Individuals Charged for Unemployment Insurance Fraud Since the COVID-19 Pandemic Began

For instance, in one pandemic-related UI fraud investigation into the theft of over $30 million in UI benefits, a Georgia woman and her co-conspirators submitted more than 5,000 fraudulent applications for UI benefits using the personally identifiable information (PII) of identity theft victims. This resulted in UI benefits being funded through prepaid debit cards issued in the names of the purported applicants. As part of the scheme, the defendant bribed a U.S. Postal Service carrier to unlawfully divert mail containing fraudulently obtained UI debit cards to the defendant. The defendant was sentenced to 120 months in federal prison. In another example, approximately 25 members and associates of a violent street gang pled guilty for their roles in a multimillion-dollar UI fraud scheme. They used the PII of more than 1,540 individuals to submit approximately 850 claims for UI benefits. The defendants ultimately obtained about $14 million in UI benefits after having filed for roughly $40 million in benefits. To date, 12 defendants have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment for UI fraud, firearms and narcotics offenses, with sentences averaging 39 months of incarceration. These 12 defendants have also been ordered to pay more than $3.5 million in criminal restitution to multiple State Workforce Agencies (SWA).

https://www.oig.dol.gov/public/Press%20 ... 5_0108.pdf

This link details the efforts of the Office of the Inspector General to detect fraud and work with various state agencies since the pandemic began five years ago. I'm not going to cut and paste, but it will give people an idea of what the government has been doing since the pandemic, when these fraud cases skyrocketed, in part because of people's desperation and in part because of the rapid influx of federal funds that encouraged sophisticated, large-scale fraudsters to go after the money.

https://www.oig.dol.gov/doloiguioversightwork.htm#inv