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Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

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Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#41

Post by everybodyknows »

Analemma_ wrote: post #30
joe_mamba wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Trump has pardoned literally dozens of Medicare fraudsters [0] (Lawrence Duran and Philip Esformes are two of the biggest ones, but there are a bunch more smaller ones), and also fired ~20 people who were attempting to investigate Medicare fraud. I haven't seen any HN articles about this, never mind getting to the HN front page twice a day, so I'll take your retraction and apology now. [0]: https://tennesseelookout.c…

> I haven't seen any HN articles about this

Okay, now there is one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46916593

Maybe you'd want to upvote it?

As the book says, better to light a single candle ...

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#42

Post by joe_mamba »

cogman10 wrote: post #40
danielvf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report to the government about a more than 50% fraud rate was from six years ago. The Minnesota government was not serious about dealing with problem. Most businesses would not last that long with a 50% customer fraud rate. Yes, there were some investigations and convictions, but nothing to on a scale that would deal with problem, nor any systematic change to a level paying huge amounts of money to scammers.

5 years ago. And it looks like the state was actually taking pretty aggressive moves against the fraud including ongoing investigations and legislation to shut down the fraud. [1] There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up until Shirly's video. That's taking the matter seriously. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020s_Minnesota_fraud_scandals

>There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up until Shirly's video

Oh yeah, the prosecution was sooo active that all the daycares listed as operational and receiving funding, had no kids in them, had blacked out or boarded up windows, misspelled signs, and if you went in to ask for enrollment 3 angry men would come out shouting at you. How many legit daycares have you seen that look like that?

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#43

Post by christkv »

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.

Its hilarious how short human memory is. To me Minnesota just seems like a replay of Tammany Hall in NYC

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#44

Post by tptacek »

cogman10 wrote: post #40
danielvf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report to the government about a more than 50% fraud rate was from six years ago. The Minnesota government was not serious about dealing with problem. Most businesses would not last that long with a 50% customer fraud rate. Yes, there were some investigations and convictions, but nothing to on a scale that would deal with problem, nor any systematic change to a level paying huge amounts of money to scammers.

5 years ago. And it looks like the state was actually taking pretty aggressive moves against the fraud including ongoing investigations and legislation to shut down the fraud. [1] There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up until Shirly's video. That's taking the matter seriously. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020s_Minnesota_fraud_scandals

To put it mildly I don't think there's a consensus among Minnesota DFL-types who paid attention to this that the state at any point took the matter seriously in proportion to its severity. There's a lot of evidence that they did the opposite thing. I try to avoid openly identifying my partisan commitments (see this whole thread for why) but: this shit is what we Democrats constantly dunk on the GOP for doing, and we're not acquitting ourselves well here.

It's annoying that we're talking about this in these terms, because the article is about public services fraud, and it's mostly technical, and it's an interesting subject. We shouldn't have to debate Tim Walz to engage with it.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#45

Post by tptacek »

christkv wrote: post #43
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.

Its hilarious how short human memory is. To me Minnesota just seems like a replay of Tammany Hall in NYC

Then I think you need to read more about Tammany Hall, because it was not simply a widespread pattern of fraud in social services.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#46

Post by Natsu »

danielvf wrote: post #16
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…

Here's a rap video, the entirety of which bragging about fraud against the government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ck7hTsug8 "I just been swipin' for EDD Go to the bank, get a stack at least This ** here better than sellin' Ps I made some racks that I couldn't believe Ten cards, that's two-hunnid large" (For context, "EDD" is California’s Employment Development Department.)

It's interesting to note that some states restrict the use of rap music lyrics as evidence:

https://legalclarity.org/using-rap-lyrics-as-evidence-in-cri...

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#47

Post by cogman10 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #42
cogman10 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 years ago. And it looks like the state was actually taking pretty aggressive moves against the fraud including ongoing investigations and legislation to shut down the fraud. [1] There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up until Shirly's video. That's taking the matter seriously. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020s_Minnesota_fraud_scandals

>There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up until Shirly's video Oh yeah, the prosecution was sooo active that all the daycares listed as operational and receiving funding, had no kids in them, had blacked out or boarded up windows, misspelled signs, and if you went in to ask for enrollment 3 angry men would come out shouting at you. How many legit daycares have you seen that look like that?

Yes, because when I enroll a child in a daycare I start by wandering around the facilities with a camera man and then I demand to see the children. But sure is suspicious that this place has no kids in it when I visit it outside it's posted operation hours.

Nick did a day worth of shooting, didn't follow up, and didn't check basic things like hours of operation.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#48

Post by linkregister »

renewiltord wrote: post #4

Yeah, the fraud’s been around for a while and the Biden DoJ was investigating it. One of the guys got fingered trying to bribe a juror¹ but he stole half the bribe money. The politicization of the issue means that Democratic Party aligned people continually flag any reference to the scam on HN though. If anyone else said that someone broke in and stole all the records from a daycare days after it was accused of fraud…

Rather than stating, without data, that Democratic Party alignment led to flagging of the story here on HN, one can look at the numerous overt statements by some of the most active users. These users claim they spend significant time flagging all political stories not tied to computing or science.

These statements are trivially found using https://hn.algolia.com.

Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes

#50

Post by tptacek »

cogman10 wrote: post #47
joe_mamba wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up until Shirly's video Oh yeah, the prosecution was sooo active that all the daycares listed as operational and receiving funding, had no kids in them, had blacked out or boarded up windows, misspelled signs, and if you went in to ask for enrollment 3 angry men would come out shouting at you. How many legit daycares have you seen that look like that?

Yes, because when I enroll a child in a daycare I start by wandering around the facilities with a camera man and then I demand to see the children. But sure is suspicious that this place has no kids in it when I visit it outside it's posted operation hours. Nick did a day worth of shooting, didn't follow up, and didn't check basic things like hours of operation.

Right, everybody, especially the author of this piece, agrees that what Shirley did was bad and stupid. And also unnecessary, because we had documentary evidence from the Minnesota government itself showing the scale of the fraud here.
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