When I was at RightOnline, last month, I heard that Mr. O’Keefe was in the process of conducting another sting operation. This video is the first installment of Project Veritas’ latest investigation, this time targeting Medicaid fraud.
What you are about to see are government employees in Ohio assisting two outrageously crooked, and unqualified Russians with applications for Medicaid.
In the video, the men explain to Ohio Medicaid workers that they are Russian immigrants who sell illegal drugs, drive a modified McLaren F1 sports car with a gold-coated engine, and use their underage sisters to perform sexual favors in exchange for drugs.
In response, Ohio employees tasked with disbursing federal Medicaid dollars are shown coaching the men through the process of applying for benefits. “If it’s not something registered here, maybe I just wouldn’t mention it,” a Franklin County Medicaid officer named Traci Daniels tells the men, when asked whether they should mention owning a vehicle that retails for nearly $1 million, as they apply for government aid designed to help poor people. “Not that I can say that. You didn’t hear that from me. But, that would right there, that would throw him off. He would be immediately not qualified.”
A complaint filed July 7, 2010 indicates ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera (seen here in the ACORN San Diego investigation) is suing James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles in federal court for at least $75,000. Vera alleges Giles and O’Keefe violated the Invasion of Privacy Act when they videotaped him giving advice regarding underage prostitution to the fake pimp and prostitute in 2009.
The thing is, this isn’t an isolated thing. I’m sure that 90% of employees in the various bureaucracies do this, because it’s the path of least resistance, not even for ideological reasons. It’s just easiest to help people scam the system than to turn them away.
And that’s not really a problem of any particular employee, but of the system which encourages this, and which tells them to just get the government checks out there by hook or by crook because who cares, it’s free money anyway.
Over and over again this is what happens in bureaucracies. There are the paper “rules” that exist in the employee handbook and are entirely hypothetical and notional, and then there are the actual rules for conduct which everyone knows, the rules for keeping your job and not getting hassled and not making the decisions or exercising the judgment you are (supposedly) hired to make or exercise.
Nice Deb 
I wonder how the government Affirmative Action hiring plans impact this. We have Sheila Jackson Lee’s at all levels of government, and that cannot be good.
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Actually, there is no limit on the value of a vehicle for Medicaid eligibility. It is an odd idiosyncracy in the law. There are limits on the amount of equity in a home, but no limit is set on the value of a vehicle. I get the point, but it’s a bad example for Medicaid fraud. Having said that, I have never had someone apply for Medicaid that had a $1M car, but it would be interesting to see.
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I remember back in the days of the dinosaurs some of the stories of “welfare moms” coming in to pick up their checks or talk to their “advisors” in Eldorado ragtops.
And of women who claimed 12, 15, even 21 dependents back when the government didn’t give a rip if a person on welfare was looking for work or not.
It’s all such a scam, and the ones hurt worst by it are those who are truly in need and/or incapable (mentally or physically) of getting and keeping a job.
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