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.
Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
51–60 of 221 posts
Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
#52[flagged]
None of this has anything to do with what he wrote, which is about the largest fraud scheme in the history of the midwest. Fraud is part of BAM's beat.
Choosing what to pay attention to says a lot about who you are and what you think. The largest fraud in the history of the country is unfolding in Washington, there is endless potential BAM content that would be of incredible consequence, but you won't find any mention of anything like that on his blog. Anybody that knows who patio is knows where his bread gets buttered understands very well why he would never say anything on those topics. As it stands this article is the only 'politica' post he has over the last year.
This is essentially gish-gallop or Banon's flood but for an audience that thinks itself sophisticated. As long as you are only focused on discussing the minutia of carefully selected technical materials, you won't have to focus on anything else going on.
Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Good example, though my impression was that was a quasi-viral TikTok trend that caught up random fools, not organized fraud?
Is that contradictory? Seems like organized fraud would need a supply of random fools, and a viral trend, if you can manage one, isn’t a bad way to get that.
Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of this has anything to do with what he wrote, which is about the largest fraud scheme in the history of the midwest. Fraud is part of BAM's beat.
Choosing what to pay attention to says a lot about who you are and what you think. The largest fraud in the history of the country is unfolding in Washington, there is endless potential BAM content that would be of incredible consequence, but you won't find any mention of anything like that on his blog. Anybody that knows who patio is knows where his bread gets buttered understands very well why he would never say an…
No, to all of this. Talking about the largest fraud scheme in the history of the midwest without taking on all of Washington corruption doesn't make you a "gish gallop" or "Banon's flood" (whatever that is). In fact, it's kind of the opposite of a gish gallop. It's a single coherent argument. If you can rebut it, do so.
Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
#55Under "In which we briefly return to Minnesota": > And I think journalism and civil society should do some genuine soul-searching on how we knew—knew—the state of that pond, but didn’t consider it particularly important or newsworthy until someone started fishing on camera. In... the same section where he cites all of the evidence the government has put together against the fraudsters. What is the issue? That these i…
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.
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 working are not actually working because 'children are unsupervised, running from room to room while adult “employees” spend hours in hallways chatting with other adults' and so all of the funds to those providers are fraudulent. [1]
I think it's pretty easy to criticize the logic for that 50% fraud rate number without requiring criminal convictions.
[1] https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/ccap.pdf#page=16
Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
#56Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Good example, though my impression was that was a quasi-viral TikTok trend that caught up random fools, not organized fraud?
Yeah, I fail to see the organization.
Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good example, though my impression was that was a quasi-viral TikTok trend that caught up random fools, not organized fraud?
Is that contradictory? Seems like organized fraud would need a supply of random fools, and a viral trend, if you can manage one, isn’t a bad way to get that.
You need a central actor who is benefitting from all the fools
Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
#59[flagged]
Notably there's no smoking gun proof for any of the claims, and equivalent stuff on the other side is dismissed as whataboutism. Clinton Foundation? Never heard of that Pokémon.
Re: Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good example, though my impression was that was a quasi-viral TikTok trend that caught up random fools, not organized fraud?
Is that contradictory? Seems like organized fraud would need a supply of random fools, and a viral trend, if you can manage one, isn’t a bad way to get that.
Organized fraud preys on disorganized fools, but this fraud didn't require or benefit from organization. You could just go do it on your own, and pocket the money until you got a visit from the cops.