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Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

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Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#121

Post by learingsci »

tptacek wrote: post #32
poplarsol wrote: post #2

Patrick is too polite to mention it, but frauds work much better if the fraudsters are also fully integrated into the political machine of the people nominally investigating the fraud.

I don't think that's in evidence. Institutionalized and ideologically-driven apathy towards the fraud, sure, but that's not uncommon (see: the defense industry; the finance industry).

A distinction without a difference imo. I think most people rightfully surmise the defense and financial industries are rife with, if not outright fraud, at least waste and abuse. We could use better language perhaps.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#122

Post by arduanika »

kristjansson wrote: post #51

On Shirely, and the reaction: there's a markedly different valence to a fraud 'investigation' seeking to arrest, try, convict, and imprison _fraudsters_ vs one seeking (through a thin veil) to mar an entire community and bring about their violent dispossession at the hands of unaccountable little green men. It would not be an unreasonable person that strongly supports the former and opposes the latter.

Hmm, you completely lost me at "little green men". What/who is this referring to? Extraterrestrials?

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#123

Post by bonsai_spool »

tptacek wrote: post #39
clucas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to OP, there is substantial evidence indicating about 50% of the daycares are scams. I've seen Nick Shirley's video, I don't think he demonstrated any concrete about any of the sites he visited (he's not a very good investigator), but if the 50% number is correct... well, the broken clock was probably right at least a couple of times that day.

The 2019 OLA report "Child Care Assistance Program: Assessment of Fraud Allegations" is what makes the claim that greater than 50% of reimbursements to child care providers under these specific programs were fraudulent. That estimate is broadly and bipartisanly considered to be directionally true.

Have you read the document? I often find these things that we believe to be true wind up being a game of telephone. We further have no prior (is the metric of this sort of like how everyone has committed a crime given sufficient prosecutorial attention)?

I've also never heard of this report before this year as someone quite attuned to what happens in Minnesota.

One document contributor contends, notably, that if "adult “employees” spend hours in hallways chatting with other adults [...] the entire amount paid to that provider in a given year is the fraud amount."

I'll leave the assessment of that definition to readers. https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/ccap.pdf

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#124

Post by mikkupikku »

mock-possum wrote: post #97
mikkupikku wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto[insult] is just a shorthand for saying "I don't actually have evidence to support my accusation."

No, it’s a term for a particular brand of racism - Like complimenting someone for being ‘articulate,’ or ‘one of the good ones.’ Sounds innocent enough, until you understand the racist underpinnings.

See above, where it is being used as an insult without any evidence to back it up. This is the most common usage, and usage defines the true meaning of the word.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#125

Post by patio11 »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #77

Take a look at the actual 2019 OLA report McKenzie cites. This characterization is wrong in ways that matter. The "50% fraud" claim? It comes from one investigator (Swanson) using what the OLA explicitly calls "a higher level view, a view that does not require the kind of proof needed in a criminal or administrative proceeding." His methodology? If kids are poorly supervised, "running from room to room while adult em…

The Swanson memo memorializes the consensus of his investigatory group and, put to question by OLA and legislators, they stick with that story:

Page 14 of PDF:

[The OLA] did not find evidence to substantiate Stillman’s allegation that there is $100 million in CCAP fraud annually. We did, on the other hand, find that the state’s CCAP fraud investigators generally agree with Stillman’s opinions about the level of CCAP fraud, as well as why it is so pervasive.

(Stillman is a line level investigator who gave a media statement which was explosive. Swanson, who authored in the internal memo, was his manager.)

I do mention that other officials only agreed to characterize as fraud fraud which had resulted in convictions. We now, years later, have nine figures just from the convictions (and guilty pleas). These officials pointedly refuse to put any number on fraud other than the number incident to convictions.

Moreover: you should be very clearly correct if you accuse someone of citing a document as making claims it does not say. That is a serious accusation. BAM's citation of this piece is "the state’s own investigators believed that, over the past several years, greater than fifty percent of all reimbursements to daycare centers were fraudulent." This is _absolutely true_ and _is in the report as claimed_.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#126

Post by vharuck »

arduanika wrote: post #122
kristjansson wrote: post #51

On Shirely, and the reaction: there's a markedly different valence to a fraud 'investigation' seeking to arrest, try, convict, and imprison _fraudsters_ vs one seeking (through a thin veil) to mar an entire community and bring about their violent dispossession at the hands of unaccountable little green men. It would not be an unreasonable person that strongly supports the former and opposes the latter.

Hmm, you completely lost me at "little green men". What/who is this referring to? Extraterrestrials?

The last time I heard about "little green men" (other than ETs) was to describe obviously-but-unofficially Russian soldiers who invaded Crimea in 2014 and claimed to be natives who wanted Russia to annex the region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea

I guess it's now being used as pejorative against groups of vaguely military style. Like the DHS agents conducting Metro Surge.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#127

Post by Muromec »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #114

Instead of giving parents vouchers, that they then use at a fraudulent daycare, in exchange for a fake job, while they take care of their children at home, parents should just get money, so that they can stay home taking care of their children if they prefer that.

Or get a proper kindergarten run by the government. Radical idea, I know

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#128

Post by arduanika »

dtornabene wrote: post #117
tptacek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire story of what happened in Minnesota, as agreed on by basically everybody involved including significant chunks of the government of Minnesota, is that convictions are not a reasonable measure of accuracy here. The story is that they didn't pursue fraud prosecutions in proportion to their severity. Responding to that with "but there weren't convictions" is literally just begging the question. It's very anno…

[flagged]

> (unless you have gone back and deleted the comments, haven't checked yet!)

Minor point: I'm pretty sure that HN comments cannot be deleted/edited after about an hour. Very different from most web forums in this regard, and worth keeping in mind when digging into past discussions! Maybe the rules are different for a superuser like tptacek here with lots of karma, but I doubt it.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#129

Post by zahlman »

martythemaniak wrote: post #108
zahlman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please speak plainly, and show your work. In your own words, who do you believe "this person" is, and why is that significant? Why do you suppose he wrote "this article", "now", and what is your reason for believing thus? What other articles by the same author are you aware of, and how does that square with the bias you are trying to allege?

Reread my OP, I was pretty clear upfront and it answers all your questions.

I have reread it and I strongly disagree with that assessment.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#130

Post by refulgentis »

patio11 wrote: post #125
blurbleblurble wrote: post #77

Take a look at the actual 2019 OLA report McKenzie cites. This characterization is wrong in ways that matter. The "50% fraud" claim? It comes from one investigator (Swanson) using what the OLA explicitly calls "a higher level view, a view that does not require the kind of proof needed in a criminal or administrative proceeding." His methodology? If kids are poorly supervised, "running from room to room while adult em…

The Swanson memo memorializes the consensus of his investigatory group and, put to question by OLA and legislators, they stick with that story: Page 14 of PDF: [The OLA] did not find evidence to substantiate Stillman’s allegation that there is $100 million in CCAP fraud annually. We did, on the other hand, find that the state’s CCAP fraud investigators generally agree with Stillman’s opinions about the level of CCAP…

I'm very amenable to the argument made in the blog post, but the tone and sidecars attached made it feel quite off, like if I looked into it, it'd turn out there was a rush to get the main idea down so we could get the sidecars attached.

Spent about 30 minutes consulting the report you mention, OP's post, and your reply, and there's clearly issues.

In the essay, you wrote that industrial-scale fraud is "beyond intellectually serious dispute," cited the OLA report, and presented the 50% figure as the finding that "staggers the imagination." (this should have been a tell)

When challenged, you retreat to: "My citation that investigators believed this is absolutely true."

Those are completely different claims. "An investigator believed X" is not "X is beyond intellectually serious dispute" — especially when the same report on the same pages says:

- The OLA itself: "We did not find evidence to substantiate the allegation" (p. 5)

- The DHS Inspector General: "I do not trust the allegation that 50 percent of CCAP money is being paid fraudulently" (p. 12)

- The investigators themselves had "varying levels of certainty — some thought it could be less, and some said they did not have enough experience to have an opinion" (p. 9)

- Swanson explicitly used "a view that does not require the kind of proof needed in a criminal or administrative proceeding" (p. 10), counting the entire payment to any center with poorly-supervised kids as "fraud"

That's not "beyond intellectually serious dispute." It is, literally, a documented dispute, inside the very report you cite as settling the matter.

And "nine figures from convictions"? That's Feeding Our Future, a federal food nutrition program. The OLA report is about CCAP, a state childcare program. Proven CCAP fraud remains at $5-6 million. You're retroactively validating a CCAP claim with convictions from a different program.

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