NATURAL disasters such as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma bring out Americans’ sterling civic spirit, stoicism and selflessness. Millions are giving millions, thousands are volunteering, donating blood, packing parcels with food and clothes, and sheltering victims of the floods. Acts of kindness, such as one Florida man giving a generator to a stranger, or of pointless defiance, such as another trying to shoot at Irma, go viral. Yet hurricanes, floods and earthquakes also present lucrative opportunities for criminals who steal from charities, insurance companies, government agencies and victims of disaster with ever more inventive scams.
“It is repulsive to have to talk about fraud when lives are still at risk,” says Corey Amundson, a federal prosecutor who heads up the National Centre for Disaster Fraud (NCDF), yet talk about it he must. On August 31st Mr Amundson and the Department of Justice formed a working group of various federal law-enforcement agencies in Houston to fight crime...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2y1h7XR
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