Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes • Hacker News Board

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#181

Post by tptacek » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #179

saint_fiasco wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bicicle got stolen a long time ago and I never recovered it. The perpetrator was never caught. From this we can conclude many things. Maybe the thief was very crafty. Maybe the local police are incompetent. Maybe everyone is trying their best and the job of going after bike thieves is very hard. But you cannot ever convince me that an appropriate conclussion could be "your bicicle didn't actually get stolen". I sa…

Yes, but we're not talking about whether or not bike thefts happen, or medicare frauds, we're talking about what actions we're going to take in the future. I too have had a bike stolen and it was an incredibly awful experience, but I'm not going to vote for a law requiring us to execute people accused of bike theft. This is what is so incredibly frustrating about these types of conversations because so frequently you…

That's literally what the article is about.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#182

Post by tptacek » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #164

tptacek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody can go back and delete comments the way that person is claiming. What a weird thing for him to have said.

I can't help but notice that said other person's profile claims "out of here"; and before this thread, had not commented since October 2024 — in that case also to get in an extended political argument with you specifically . That's quite a grudge to hold.

What can I say? People love me.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#183

Post by ls612 » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:40 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #176

ls612 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He literally writes about how the claims of racism and profiling were in bad faith, intended to frighten the state investigators, and that this is known from email communications revealed in discovery on some of these prosecutions where the fraud participants discuss the strategies they will employ to maximize the impact of their bad faith allegations of racism and racial profiling. There is no ambiguity here so I do…

Just to clarify, are these the ones who got arrested and sent to prison?

The particular people patio11 is referencing are in jail and charged but not yet convicted. The emails have been entered into evidence and thus made public as part of the trial.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#184

Post by arduanika » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 3:01 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #131

arduanika wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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.

Nobody can go back and delete comments the way that person is claiming. What a weird thing for him to have said.

Eh, that part's not so weird. Not weird to forget that HN is weird in this particular way. I just wanted to clarify it for myself & for anyone reading.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#185

Post by treebeard901 » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 3:20 AM UTC

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'm kind of surprised how the political and legal network around Feeding Our Future, for example, has gone so unnoticed and underreported.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#186

Post by laidoffamazon » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 3:29 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #150

refulgentis wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is genuinely pathetic, Patrick. You want to say it so bad but can’t!

No notes on the fraudsters pardoned by this current admin of course.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#187

Post by refulgentis » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 3:48 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #150

refulgentis wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course Minnesota has suffered industrial-scale fraud. FoF alone clears that bar. I've never said otherwise.

But your essay doesn't just claim fraud exists: it presents the 50% figure as the evidence that "staggers the imagination" and makes the case "beyond intellectually serious dispute." That's not parenthetical color. The paragraph is load-bearing on that number.

You charitably won't make me own $5M. I never claimed it. I've said in every reply the real number is likely substantially higher. My point has been the same throughout: you presented a disputed estimate as settled, from a report that explicitly could not settle it - in which the IG rejected it, DHS leadership called it not credible, the OLA said it "cannot offer a reliable estimate.", and the source themself named their lack of a standard beyond a vibe.

The essay is 5,000 words on why epistemic standards matter in fraud investigation. The critique is the essay's own standard, applied to the essay. You should apologize for the high school debate comment.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#188

Post by refulgentis » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 3:53 AM UTC

laidoffamazon wrote: post #186

patio11 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is genuinely pathetic, Patrick. You want to say it so bad but can’t! No notes on the fraudsters pardoned by this current admin of course.

The political sidecars attached are unnecessary.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#189

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 4:04 AM UTC

advisedwang wrote: post #27

The reason that "the left" is rolling eyes at the fuss being made over this fraud is: 1. The fraud is in fact being investigated, people are being charged and convicted. Despite this, rightwing media institutions are acting as if fraud is being ignored and maybe even covered up and encouraged because 2. This is just another example of the decades long project by those who have lots of money and don't want to see it g…

It's wild how distorted everyone's bubble is. If you go to conservative news sites or r/Conservative, you'd think this daycare business was the biggest problem that has ever faced the United States since 9/11. Every other article is about daycare and Somalis. Like, really? This is the big story of 2025???

In the real world, this maybe makes page 3 of the "crime" section of the newspaper for a single day.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#190

Post by tptacek » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 4:31 AM UTC

laidoffamazon wrote: post #186

patio11 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is genuinely pathetic, Patrick. You want to say it so bad but can’t! No notes on the fraudsters pardoned by this current admin of course.

Fraudsters pardoned by the current administration don't make public service and welfare fraud in Minnesota any less grave or important, and it's super weird that people across this thread keep implying otherwise.