The Corporate Media has been busily inventing more fake-news to attack Trump this holiday season. While they were busy spreading unsubstantiated rumors about something- someone-supposedly-said-about-somebody-else, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was announcing that the US Department of Justice recovered nearly $4 billion from fraud cases committed by entities involved with the Federal Government in 2017.
Sessions identified Health Care, Housing, and Procurement Services as the largest sectors for fraud and abuse.
Despite Obama's boasts last year that Obamacare was fraud-free; over $900 million were recovered from pharmaceutical and medical device contractors alone. Mylan Inc., the central company in the Epipen Scandal forked over $231 million to Medicare and another $214 million to State healthcare agencies. Shire Pharmaceuticals was arguably even more corrupt than Epipen. They had an extensive list of blatant corruption that cost them $350 million in total fines. Session mentioned E-Clinical Works---a story we spoke of here in June---a healthcare software company who falsified its product's qualifications for government contracts. If we recall correctly, they were caught after their system failed during a data breach. They paid $155 million in restitution.
$543 million was recovered in housing and mortgage fraud. Mostly in these cases, the lenders were billing HUD to guarantee loans on properties which they knew to be unqualified. One company was actually certifying homes that were in substandard condition, then selling insurance policies to a provider which they controlled. The scam thus collected mortgages for dangerous building and collected again on the insurance when a problem arose.
Procurement Fraud was also quite blatant. The largest settlement came against a Kuwaiti firm for price-gouging foodstuffs for the US Military. This was a $95 million judgment; but raises the bigger question of why we have foreign contractors supplying the US Army.
Sessions mentioned catching a solar-energy company that ripped off $30 million under Obama's Stimulus Package; another $30 million from a company marketing 'Obama-phones' and a Small Business Administration contractor was caught bid-rigging and fined $16 million.
All of this corruption certainly adds up. It will be interesting to watch Swamp-Draining in 2018, for certain.
No comments:
Post a Comment