'Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid

Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

[...]

One Louisiana Department of Labor clerk, Wayne P. Lawless, has been charged with issuing about 80 fraudulent disaster unemployment benefit cards in exchange for bribes of up to $300 per application. Mr. Lawless, a state contract worker, announced to one man he helped apply for hurricane benefits that he wanted to "get something out of it," the affidavit said. His lawyer did not respond to several messages left at his office and home for comment.

This is a rather extraordinary standard of incompetence, fraud, waste and abuse even for the Federal government.

As for the corrupt officials, I have an idea or two about what Mr. Lawless and his ilk should "get out of it" - five to seven years of hard prison time wouldn't be a bad start.

'Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid - New York Times