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Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

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Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#141

Post by skybrian »

650 wrote: post #72
wredcoll wrote: post #70

Look, this is a mostly reasonable, if slightly vague, article about investigating fraud and mechanisms by which you do so. What it lacks is any concrete suggestion as to what should change, beyond some vague allusions that perhaps racial/ethnic profiling should make a comeback. The real problem here though is that the entire article ignores the duty[1] the government owes its citizens. It's "fine"[2] if stripe or vis…

This article isn't vague at all. It references various sources, and uses precise language (if you can recognize it) to convey its message. Yes, innocent until proven guilty, but the fact that the government has "lesser" educated Fraud analysts, chooses to ask for reimbursement of overbilling, and many more nuanced topics talked about in the article is not vague.

McKenzie uses paraphrases to avoid writing certain keywords. For example, he never writes "DOGE" or "Elon Musk" in this article. Instead, he writes "We had a poorly-calibrated federal initiative led by a charismatic tech entrepreneur."

If you've been reading the news then you can decode these paraphrases, but they do make his articles significantly harder to read.

I'm tempted to ask an LLM to replace them with more straightforward references.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#142

Post by plorkyeran »

tptacek wrote: post #62
Brybry wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He cites the 50% number from Jay Swanson, a CCAP Investigations Unit manager, and then dismisses criticism of the number by saying the criticism requires an unreasonable standard (only criminal convictions). But if you read the cited source of how Swanson came up with that number he said it wasn't just for over-billing (claiming more kids than the places actually had). Instead, by his estimation, the employees workin…

This is a great argument. I wish this is what we were discussing rather than Nick Shirley and the partisan politics of the issue.

Oddly enough starting an article with a defense of Nick Shirley leads to the comments on an article being about that.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#143

Post by [deleted] »

patio11 wrote: post #137
cynicalkane wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP didn't claim you of misrepresenting facts in the document directly; OP claimed you of grossly mischaracterizing those facts in order to support claims the document does not support. The document is cited as supporting massive fraud "beyond intellectually serious dispute" while the scale of the fraud is disputed in the cited document. But, on the other hand, I suppose intellectually serious dispute requires both si…

We have reviewed your feedback on our editorial choices, and are comfortable that we have characterized the claims in the report accurately. We stand by "Minnesota has suffered a decade-long campaign of industrial-scale fraud against several social programs. This is beyond intellectually serious dispute." This is editorial analysis, informed—as is stated in the plain text—by the experience of several programs. Feedin…

[deleted]

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#144

Post by buerkle »

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?

[flagged]

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#145

Post by tptacek »

plorkyeran wrote: post #142
tptacek wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great argument. I wish this is what we were discussing rather than Nick Shirley and the partisan politics of the issue.

Oddly enough starting an article with a defense of Nick Shirley leads to the comments on an article being about that.

I mean, I wouldn't have led off that way either, but I know what Patrick is talking about and I read the article. I genuinely believe the current administration is the worst in the history of the country, and I also believe that to oppose it effectively we need every government body we run to be completely on the ball, so it's really dispiriting to see people reflexively defend misconduct and incompetence. That shouldn't be a habit we share with the party we oppose.

(I can't speak for Patrick's politics, only for mine.)

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#146

Post by martythemaniak »

zahlman wrote: post #129
martythemaniak wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now go on X.com and see whether this blog post is being shared and discussed amongst the MAGA Silicon Valley executive class. Taken at face value, this topic is completely irrelevant to them and you should see no mention of it whatsoever and therefore I am hallucinating things. But if you do see it discussed, then you'll also see a subtext of "See, Trump was right to send ICE to MN!", and thus patio has done his job well in the way I described.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#147

Post by spbaar »

margalabargala wrote: post #9
hyperpape wrote: post #5

> They will sometimes organize recruitment very openly, using the same channels you use for recruiting at any other time: open Facebook groups, Reddit threads, and similar. They will film TikTok videos flashing their ill-gotten gains, and explaining steps in order for how you, too, can get paid. > As a fraud investigator, you are allowed and encouraged to read Facebook at work. I tend to believe this, but it would be…

There are tons of these out there. In late 2024 there was the whole "Infinite money glitch" tiktok trend that was just check fraud. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzp7y8e7vo

This is a poor example though, because I don't think anyone got away with it? And it was viral, but not organized.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#148

Post by zahlman »

patio11 wrote: post #137
cynicalkane wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP didn't claim you of misrepresenting facts in the document directly; OP claimed you of grossly mischaracterizing those facts in order to support claims the document does not support. The document is cited as supporting massive fraud "beyond intellectually serious dispute" while the scale of the fraud is disputed in the cited document. But, on the other hand, I suppose intellectually serious dispute requires both si…

We have reviewed your feedback on our editorial choices, and are comfortable that we have characterized the claims in the report accurately. We stand by "Minnesota has suffered a decade-long campaign of industrial-scale fraud against several social programs. This is beyond intellectually serious dispute." This is editorial analysis, informed—as is stated in the plain text—by the experience of several programs. Feedin…

Seriously, it's beyond amazing how much mud this thread has been flinging at you. If the analysis you've offered is somehow not above board, it seems impossible to point out the clear facts of the matter in a way that nobody would object to.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#149

Post by tptacek »

martythemaniak wrote: post #146
zahlman wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Now go on X.com and see whether this blog post is being shared and discussed amongst the MAGA Silicon Valley executive class. Taken at face value, this topic is completely irrelevant to them and you should see no mention of it whatsoever and therefore I am hallucinating things. But if you do see it discussed, then you'll also see a subtext of "See, Trump was right to send ICE to MN!", and thus patio has done his job…

This is not a reasonable way to understand the world. It does not matter if facts are inconvenient on Twitter (why do you care about what's being said on Twitter to begin with? stop now.)

This attitude, that if reactionary tech execs are sharing something on Twitter it must be bad to talk about it, is poison.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#150

Post by patio11 »

refulgentis wrote: post #136
patio11 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FoF claimed to supply meals at the same physical locations as CCAP and paid the same owners. As mentioned, one of nine of the operators profiled, who was previously raided in an investigation into alleged overbilling of CCAP, received $1.5M from FoF. FoF is in fact not a federal nutrition program but actually the name of a non-profit which received grants from a federal nutrition program for forwarding to third parti…

The operator overlap is real, and the correction that FoF is a non-profit rather than a federal program is fair. I'll take both points. But look at what's happened across this exchange: Essay: Industrial-scale CCAP fraud is "beyond intellectually serious dispute." The evidence: the OLA report shows investigators believed 50%+ of reimbursements were fraudulent. When challenged that the OLA explicitly could not substan…

The thing which is beyond intellectually serious dispute is industrial-scaled fraud.

You keep wanting to make me "own" the CCAP's estimate. I will not reciprocally try to make you "own" $5 million, because I am charitable and because history has been unkind to the officials who made it.

I do ask you to own: "Minnesota HAS NOT suffered industrial-scale fraud across several social programs." Otherwise this is judging a high school debate competition, and I've had better.

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