Minnesota continues to make national headlines for its refusal to stop the fraud.
From Fox News,
Minnesota’s anti-ICE aid fund becomes latest casualty of state’s embarrassing fraud problem.
Only 82 of 300 applicants could be cleared as non-fraudulent before officials stopped processing the relief funds
John Phelan wrote about this case here. Only $500,000 of a planed $2 million was actually distributed because so few of the applications appeared to be legitimate.
Fox News reports,
“The fact that people, after all this fraud, felt that they could apply and get away with it, I think it’s a problem because clearly there’s no fear out there,” Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Lunde said, according to KARE 11 [NBC]. “Until we get it where people fear things, then they’re gonna keep doing it.”
Lunde is the sole Republican member of the County board. Commissioner Lunde is correct: fraudsters do not fear any level of government. In those rare instances where they are caught, the usual result is that they keep the money while serving a short probation sentence.
Of the latest scandal, KSTP-5 and WDIO (ABC, Duluth) report,
Hennepin County sheriff’s office lacks records to start small business grant fraud investigation
Details,
After Hennepin County staff reported apparent fraudulent applications for a small business recovery grant fund, they asked the sheriff’s office to investigate in June, KSTP reports.
In July the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office requested the documents they needed to open the investigation, but as of mid-September, those documents haven’t been shared yet.
A ray of hope? KSTP had reported last week,
Inside Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines: Why fraud cases rarely lead to prison.
KSTP reports,
The grid — as it’s known to judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys — ranks crimes from most severe to least and assigns each defendant a score depending on their criminal history. The box they fall into on the grid shows a recommended sentence in months and a range judges can sentence within.
For most violent crimes, the recommended sentence falls above a key threshold on the grid, making prison likely. But many non-violent offenses — like fraud — often land defendants in the shaded part of the grid where generally the recommended sentence is probation.
Adding,
But as Minnesota grapples with investigations into complex fraud schemes, the state is taking steps to toughen the punishment against people who steal millions of dollars from public assistance programs.
Hope kills,
After further discussion, the [sentencing guidelines] commission concluded that the offense warranted harsher treatment and voted to rank the crime at a severity level that generally calls for prison sentences even with no criminal history.
The only thing that will truly strike fear into fraudsters would be actual experienced consequences. Yes, a few fraudsters prosecuted at the federal level are now serving multi-decade prison sentences. But I have yet to hear of a bankruptcy of a convicted fraudster. They have been allowed to keep their homes and other fruits of their malfeasance.
On this point, from FOX-9 earlier this month,
Medicaid fraudster’s corporate bank account off limits, judge rules
Fox 9 reported,
Hennepin County District Court Judge Mark Kappelhoff rejected efforts by state prosecutors to seize more than $650,000 from a corporate account belonging to a convicted Medicaid fraudster…
…Judge Kappelhoff denied that request, ruling that state statute only allows the seizure of funds to pay restitution if the account holder is convicted of a felony.
He said funds cannot be taken from the corporate account because Nur’s company was never charged or convicted in the fraud scheme.
To be clear, Ahmed Nur was convicted of a felony. But Nur’s company (the non-corporeal, corporate entity) was not convicted, so Nur, the human man, gets to keep all the corporate money.
Crime pays, and it’s extremely lucrative.
[Note: an earlier version of this post appeared at Power Line.]
