Ten years later, extent of Katrina fraud still unknown

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

A decade after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast with historic ferocity, the federal government still doesn't know how many taxpayer dollars were lost to waste and fraud in the aftermath of the storm.

 

Botched contracts, rampant fraud and mismanaged projects squandered millions of dollars meant to help the victims of Katrina. Politicians and business owners who skimmed off the top of the government's relief effort were later jailed, with some remaining behind bars to this day.

 

Hurricane Katrina "produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history," the New York Times wrote of the disaster in 2006, just months after the storm.

 

When former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced last summer to 10 years in prison for corruption and bribery — some of which occurred during the hurricane response — he became the 17th local politician sentenced since the storm, according to the New Orleans Advocate.