FEMA Employees Plead Guilty to Bribery

[Rose Siding]

snip>
They each face up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine at sentencing July 26.

The volunteer firefighters came to New Orleans to help with search-and-rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29.

They signed on with FEMA and were put to work managing a camp housing disaster relief workers in the city's Algiers neighborhood, one of the men's attorneys has said.

Prosecutors said the pair allegedly approached a local contractor and offered to inflate the head count for meals at the camp in exchange for a payoff. The contractor held a meal service contract, and would earn more money if the head count were inflated.

The contractor reported the offer to the FBI.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-katrina-fraud-plea,0,3362305.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[HereSince1628]

1. Hurrah for that contractor! I hope he at least got a happy face.

HSD is fucked up but it clearly isn't just incompetence.

[EllieGreen]

6. I'll second this! n/t

[Patchuli]

2. Good for the contractor!

Those dirty carpetbaggers deserve what they get! Taking advantage of those who have been hurt so much. It makes me ill.

[liberalhistorian]

3. What do you mean, those who've been hurt so much?

Don't you know that they're all just "immoral, lazy and welfare-pampered?" :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

I still cannot believe a black minister, of all people, had the gall to even think such a thing, let alone put it in an email. I can certainly believe that a republican congressman shared the email, but not that a black minister actually wrote it.

[Maddy McCall]

5. Why wouldn't you believe that?

I worked on a state commission with a black woman who once said that the reason so many women in Mississippi are on welfare is because "they are too stupid to know how to set their alarm clocks."

There are black elitists just like there are white elitists.

[justice1]

4. Iwonder if he will get more or less contracts after this.

[klook]

7. Times-Picayune article today

2 guilty in FEMA bribery case
By Bruce Eggler, Staff writer

Two Federal Emergency Management Agency officials pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of public bribery while managing a FEMA base camp in Algiers.

The two Colorado men promised a food contractor they would falsely inflate the number of meals he provided the camp in exchange for kickbacks, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Andrew Rose and Loyd Holliman, identified by their attorneys as Colorado firefighters who came to New Orleans to help with search-and-rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina, admitted soliciting and receiving bribes in their capacity as FEMA officials.
--More: http://www.nola.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1144305599230500.xml?nola

The story goes on to say that they were going to get $23 an hour (way less than John McCain would pay them to pick lettuce, but still not too shabby a pay rate for volunteer firefighters). They wanted the contractor to kick back an extra $2,500 a week each for their services in this scam! $10k a month -- apiece -- to rip off the taxpayers. What a couple of scumbags. I'm glad the guy turned them in.