The Never-Ending Government Fraud Racket

The Never-Ending Government Fraud Racket

Posted on July 20, 2011 by

Here’s a great example of family values, but only if you think it’s noble for a husband, wife, and daughter to conspire together to rip off taxpayers. I guess the family that steals together, stays together.

Here are some of the details from the Daily Caller expose.

A special investigation by The Daily Caller has discovered that a State Department contract specialist participated in awarding more than $52 million in taxpayer-funded contracts to a company owned and operated by her husband and daughter. Kathleen McGrade helped their company, Sterling Royale Group, win 43 federally funded contracts over the last few years. McGrade acted as the Contracting Officer (CO) for awards to Sterling Royale Group. McGrade’s husband, Brian Collinsworth, serves as the company’s Vice President. McGrade’s daughter, J.L. (Jennifer) Herring, is its president and CEO.

What isn’t apparent from the story, but which presumably will add insult to injury (or, perhaps in this case, injury to injury) is how much money was involved and the degree to which the money was spent on purposes that would be illegitimate even if the contracting process was honest. And speaking of government fraud (is that a redundancy?), James O’Keefe of ACORN fame is back with a set of undercover videos on Medicaid fraud. Experts have estimated that there are tens of billions of dollars of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, so O’Keefe isn’t uncovering the tip of the iceberg. He’s looking at one snowflake on top of the tip of the iceberg.

Dan Mitchell is co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and Chairman of the Board. He is an expert in international tax competition and supply-side tax policy.

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