Easy money?

Disaster relief | With Katrina relief providing a bonanza for scammers, reformers ask: Can FEMA change? | Clint Rainey

Some of the more than 10,000 mobile homes at the Hope, Ark., airport.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— We are almost one month away from the anniversary of last year's Katrina disaster. For the past 11 months, taxpayers have labored in the wake of the costliest hurricane in U.S. history, plucking billions from their wallets, wiping away sweat from hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours, and marshaling millions of words to discuss FEMA fraud and bureaucratic bungle.

A question frequently asked: Can Washington officials sorting through hundreds of thousands of specialized cases ever get it right? When FEMA rules are too tough, critics rip into it for making sufferers' lives more miserable; when they're too easy, huge rip-offs occur. But lately it's the rip-offs that have people up in arms. New accounts come in every day, seemingly faster than the government can prosecute offenders.

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July 22, 2006, Vol. 21, No. 28

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