[HN Gopher] Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
___________________________________________________________________
Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
Author : dangrossman
Score : 118 points
Date : 2026-02-06 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bitsaboutmoney.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bitsaboutmoney.com)
| poplarsol wrote:
| Patrick is too polite to mention it, but frauds work much better
| if the fraudsters are also fully integrated into the political
| machine of the people nominally investigating the fraud.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think that's in evidence. Institutionalized and
| ideologically-driven apathy towards the fraud, sure, but that's
| not uncommon (see: the defense industry; the finance industry).
| learingsci wrote:
| A distinction without a difference imo. I think most people
| rightfully surmise the defense and financial industries are
| rife with, if not outright fraud, at least waste and abuse.
| We could use better language perhaps.
| christkv wrote:
| Its hilarious how short human memory is. To me Minnesota just
| seems like a replay of Tammany Hall in NYC
| tptacek wrote:
| Then I think you need to read more about Tammany Hall,
| because it was not simply a widespread pattern of fraud in
| social services.
| christkv wrote:
| There was few social services at the time. It was a
| patronage system. Different rewards but buying votes all
| the same. My point is that patronage is a long storied
| American tradition so I don't know why people are al
| shocked that such schemes are still ongoing. Republican and
| anti castro cubans is or was a similar patronage system.
| sdwr wrote:
| All I remember hearing about this is how creepy and racist it was
| to look for kids at a black-owned daycare. It was a scam the
| whole time?
| clucas wrote:
| According to OP, there is substantial evidence indicating about
| 50% of the daycares are scams. I've seen Nick Shirley's video,
| I don't think he demonstrated any concrete about any of the
| sites he visited (he's not a very good investigator), but if
| the 50% number is correct... well, the broken clock was
| probably right at least a couple of times that day.
| tptacek wrote:
| The 2019 OLA report "Child Care Assistance Program:
| Assessment of Fraud Allegations" is what makes the claim that
| _greater_ than 50% of reimbursements to child care providers
| _under these specific programs_ were fraudulent. That
| estimate is broadly and bipartisanly considered to be
| directionally true.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| Have you read the document? I often find these things that
| we believe to be true wind up being a game of telephone. We
| further have no prior (is the metric of this sort of like
| how everyone has committed a crime given sufficient
| prosecutorial attention)?
|
| I've also never heard of this report before this year as
| someone quite attuned to what happens in Minnesota.
|
| One document contributor contends, notably, that if "adult
| "employees" spend hours in hallways chatting with other
| adults [...] the entire amount paid to that provider in a
| given year is the fraud amount."
|
| I'll leave the assessment of that definition to readers.
| https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/ccap.pdf
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, the fraud's been around for a while and the Biden DoJ was
| investigating it. One of the guys got fingered trying to bribe a
| juror1 but he stole half the bribe money.
|
| The politicization of the issue means that Democratic Party
| aligned people continually flag any reference to the scam on HN
| though. If anyone else said that someone broke in and stole all
| the records from a daycare days after it was accused of fraud it
| would be considered a bald-faced lie but because of the political
| alignment (this is VP candidate Walz's state) everyone is forced
| to pretend there's no scam.
|
| 1 Paradoxically the one honest juror who reported the bribe was
| removed from the case. No others reported any bribe which
| obviously must mean they received none.
| linkregister wrote:
| Rather than stating, without data, that Democratic Party
| alignment led to flagging of the story here on HN, one can look
| at the numerous overt statements by some of the most active
| users. These users claim they spend significant time flagging
| all political stories not tied to computing or science.
|
| These statements are trivially found using
| https://hn.algolia.com.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Typing "Trump" into that trivially reveals disparate
| outcomes. Then again perhaps "Trump says Maduro captured" is
| computing and science to these people. I have no peer-
| reviewed evidence that they don't think that so I must admit
| it as equally likely as anything else.
| linkregister wrote:
| It is a common error to misunderstand the base rate of an
| event. In this case, the frequency of media articles about
| Trump dwarf other political subjects.
|
| Or one could assume a vast conspiracy to explain the
| phenomenon.
| renewiltord wrote:
| False dichotomies like that are easy mistakes to make.
| Consider Reddit, no conspiracy, and yet overwhelmingly of
| some opinions. Coordination requiring conspiracies is
| naive, but forgivable among novices of epistemology.
| hyperpape wrote:
| > They will sometimes organize recruitment very openly, using the
| same channels you use for recruiting at any other time: open
| Facebook groups, Reddit threads, and similar. They will film
| TikTok videos flashing their ill-gotten gains, and explaining
| steps in order for how you, too, can get paid.
|
| > As a fraud investigator, you are allowed and encouraged to read
| Facebook at work.
|
| I tend to believe this, but it would be a lot more compelling
| with links to a case where Facebook/TikTok posts were useful
| evidence.
| margalabargala wrote:
| There are tons of these out there.
|
| In late 2024 there was the whole "Infinite money glitch" tiktok
| trend that was just check fraud.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzp7y8e7vo
| hyperpape wrote:
| Good example, though my impression was that was a quasi-viral
| TikTok trend that caught up random fools, not organized
| fraud?
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Is that contradictory? Seems like organized fraud would
| need a supply of random fools, and a viral trend, if you
| can manage one, isn't a bad way to get that.
| wredcoll wrote:
| You need a central actor who is benefitting from all the
| fools
| hyperpape wrote:
| Organized fraud preys on disorganized fools, but this
| fraud didn't require or benefit from organization. You
| could just go do it on your own, and pocket the money
| until you got a visit from the cops.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Yeah, I fail to see the organization.
| spbaar wrote:
| This is a poor example though, because I don't think anyone
| got away with it? And it was viral, but not organized.
| danielvf wrote:
| Here's a rap video, the entirety of which bragging about fraud
| against the government:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ck7hTsug8
|
| "I just been swipin' for EDD
|
| Go to the bank, get a stack at least
|
| This ** here better than sellin' Ps
|
| I made some racks that I couldn't believe
|
| Ten cards, that's two-hunnid large"
|
| (For context, "EDD" is California's Employment Development
| Department.)
| hyperpape wrote:
| With Google I can find out that he was prosecuted after his
| video came out. I'll count it. https://abc7.com/post/nuke-
| bizzle-rapper-edd-fraud/12024561/
| Natsu wrote:
| It's interesting to note that some states restrict the use of
| rap music lyrics as evidence:
|
| https://legalclarity.org/using-rap-lyrics-as-evidence-in-
| cri...
| _neil wrote:
| Much better bangers about fraud:
|
| Dead Prez - Hell yeah:
| https://youtu.be/kGjSq4HqP9Y?si=_z6jb0Vfo7_PiITQ&t=82
|
| Maxo Kream - 5200: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kC9j6Zp-
| kg
|
| Maxo was actually arrested for racketeering, though not due
| to this song specifically (I don't think).
| 650 wrote:
| Great article, ties in neatly with observations among many that
| fraud, grifting, and devolution of the social contract has
| escalated greatly since 2020.
| arduanika wrote:
| I don't think anything in the article, or in Patrick's general
| work, makes strong claims about a trend. Fraud may be getting
| worse as you say, but that is not his beat. He tends to depict
| fraud as eternal, and wants to shed light on it as a technical
| problem to solve.
|
| Also, there are real dangers to blackpilling about fraud.
| "Everybody is doing it" is exactly what one says before doing
| fraud oneself. In reality, there are a lot of people out there
| doing the right thing every day.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| > To the extent that Bits about Money has an editorial line on
| that controversy, it is this: if you fish in a pond known to have
| 50% blue fish, and pull out nine fish, you will appear to be a
| savant-like catcher of blue fish, and people claiming that it is
| unlikely you have identified a blue fish will swiftly be made to
| look like fools. But the interesting bit of the observation is,
| almost entirely, the base rate of the pond. And I think
| journalism and civil society should do some genuine soul-
| searching on how we knew--knew--the state of that pond, but
| didn't consider it particularly important or newsworthy until
| someone started fishing on camera.
|
| Does Patrick want to address the fact that this happened during
| school break and that Nick Shirley didn't prove much of anything?
| tptacek wrote:
| No? He dunks on Shirley. His point is that professional
| investigators found and documented much worse things.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Except for the part where when asked for proof he laughed off
| the idea of using convictions as a measure of accuracy.
| tptacek wrote:
| The entire story of what happened in Minnesota, as agreed
| on by basically everybody involved including significant
| chunks of the government of Minnesota, is that convictions
| are not a reasonable measure of accuracy here. The story is
| that they didn't pursue fraud prosecutions in proportion to
| their severity. Responding to that with "but there weren't
| convictions" is literally just begging the question.
|
| It's very annoying that I feel like I have to say this but:
| I'm a committed Democrat, and I feel like my anti-Trump
| anti-racism bona fides, including on this site, are quite
| solid. The Minnesota thing happened. We can debate the
| scale, but it happened.
| wredcoll wrote:
| My ultimate take on the article is "so what?"
|
| Yes, fraud is bad. I agreed before I read the article.
|
| I've learned (from the article) that there was apparently
| some fraud in Minnesota, some of which was successfully
| prosecuted and, possibly, some that wasn't.
|
| If pressed, I would say the take away from the article is
| that the fraud investigators should have been more
| willing to use race/ethnicity and accept a lower standard
| of evidence before taking action.
|
| Is there something I'm missing?
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| That's what I'm getting from this article too. It's
| giving "Nick Shirley in the style of lots of extra
| words".
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| Did you read the actual report? The part about how a
| single investigator didn't like how some daycares were
| run, the level of supervision, and then used that to
| extrapolate a hypothetical invalidation of all payments
| to those facilities as "fraudulent"?
|
| Democrats have rationalized much worse things than this,
| for example the ethnic cleansing (genocide) in Gaza. So
| with all due respect frankly I'm not at all assuaged by
| your caveat.
| dtornabene wrote:
| For the record, your "anti-racism bona fides" are not in
| anyway "quite solid". I'm on record for pointing out the
| shocking racism in the ways you have denigrated
| Palestinians on this site, for a couple years now! I can
| link to multiple examples of this, its not hidden and you
| did not stop (unless you have gone back and deleted the
| comments, haven't checked yet!), on the contrary you had
| dang threaten to ban me. Also worth pointing out 1) that
| the shared the religion of many of these Somalis and
| Palestinians definitely makes me wonder about your own
| feelings here 2) the person whose article under
| discussion, which is very much a white wash of a racist
| provocateur who is not a "journalist", is one of your own
| former business partners. You are free to whine to dang
| again and get me banned now, but I repeat, you are not in
| any way someone who should get to stand on your "anti-
| racism bona fides" especially when the people in question
| are brown muslims. As I posted in my last comment to you,
| and dang, I approached your racism exactly how you
| ostensibly would want, I gently encouraged you to
| reconsider, to examine other sources, etc. Hasn't really
| seemed to have any effect! You still post genocide
| propaganda and out and out racism, like "All Palestinians
| actually should just live in Jordan".
| arduanika wrote:
| > (unless you have gone back and deleted the comments,
| haven't checked yet!)
|
| Minor point: I'm pretty sure that HN comments cannot be
| deleted/edited after about an hour. Very different from
| most web forums in this regard, and worth keeping in mind
| when digging into past discussions! Maybe the rules are
| different for a superuser like tptacek here with lots of
| karma, but I doubt it.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong.
| tptacek wrote:
| Nobody can go back and delete comments the way that
| person is claiming. What a weird thing for him to have
| said.
| saint_fiasco wrote:
| My bicicle got stolen a long time ago and I never recovered
| it. The perpetrator was never caught.
|
| From this we can conclude many things. Maybe the thief was
| very crafty. Maybe the local police are incompetent. Maybe
| everyone is trying their best and the job of going after
| bike thieves is very hard.
|
| But you cannot ever convince me that an appropriate
| conclussion could be "your bicicle didn't actually get
| stolen". I saw it. I can't identify the thief, there will
| never be a conviction, but don't tell me it didn't happen.
|
| A conviction in a court of law is very important to be able
| to confidently say "so-and-so has committed fraud". But
| requiring a criminal conviction just to be able to say that
| fraud has happened is lunacy.
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| As if: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46916838
|
| What if this article is just the rationalist version of the
| Nick Shirley hit piece?
| dispersed wrote:
| Under "In which we briefly return to Minnesota":
|
| > And I think journalism and civil society should do some genuine
| soul-searching on how we knew--knew--the state of that pond, but
| didn't consider it particularly important or newsworthy until
| someone started fishing on camera.
|
| In... the same section where he cites all of the evidence the
| government has put together against the fraudsters. What is the
| issue? That these investigations should have been more
| prominently featured in the mainstream news? Would that have
| helped or hurt investigations?
|
| > Of course, as the New York Times very carefully wordsmithed
| recently:
|
| >> Minnesota officials said in early January that the state
| conducted compliance checks at nine child-care centers after Mr.
| Shirley posted his video and found them "operating as expected,"
| although it had "ongoing investigations" at four of them. One of
| the centers, which Mr. Shirley singled out because it misspelled
| the word "Learning" on its sign, has since voluntarily closed.
|
| > An inattentive reader might conclude from this paragraph that
| the Times disputes Shirley's reporting.
|
| The New York Times is _literally_ quoting what the Minnesota
| officials said. What were they supposed to do, add on "but a kid
| on YouTube says differently"?
|
| I don't think the serious response to Nick Shirley's "journalism"
| is that there was no fraud; rather, it's that he came into the
| situation with a thinly veiled agenda and fed his audience
| exactly what they wanted to hear. Did his video make it more or
| less likely that we'll be able to investigate and resolve the
| fraud situation in MN? I guess that depends on how serious you
| think the laughably corrupt Trump administration is, but the fact
| that they seized on this as an excuse to send in 3000 ICE agents
| is not exactly promising.
| danielvf wrote:
| The report to the government about a more than 50% fraud rate
| was from six years ago. The Minnesota government was not
| serious about dealing with problem. Most businesses would not
| last that long with a 50% customer fraud rate.
|
| Yes, there were some investigations and convictions, but
| nothing to on a scale that would deal with problem, nor any
| systematic change to a level paying huge amounts of money to
| scammers.
| dispersed wrote:
| First: assuming your goal is to stop the fraud, does making
| deliberately inflammatory YouTube videos get you closer to
| that goal? I think the government's response clearly shows
| that they're more interested in the optics of "blue state
| full of scammer immigrants" than any actual resolution.
|
| Second: I think one of the points Patrick misses is that
| fraud did indisputably occur, but that doesn't mean we need
| to treat Shirley as a neutral observer who simply cares about
| fiscal responsibility. (If I'm wrong, I eagerly away his next
| video on red state fraud.)
| tptacek wrote:
| He's not treating Shirley as a neutral observer; he's
| lamenting Shirley's involvement, which has impeded efforts
| to clean this up.
| cogman10 wrote:
| 5 years ago. And it looks like the state was actually taking
| pretty aggressive moves against the fraud including ongoing
| investigations and legislation to shut down the fraud. [1]
|
| There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up until
| Shirly's video. That's taking the matter seriously.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020s_Minnesota_fraud_scandals
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> There was active prosecution ongoing literally right up
| until Shirly's video_
|
| Oh yeah, the prosecution was _sooo_ active that all the
| daycares listed as operational and receiving funding, had
| no kids in them, had blacked out or boarded up windows,
| misspelled signs, and if you went in to ask for enrollment
| 3 angry men would come out shouting at you. How many legit
| daycares have you seen that look like that?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yes, because when I enroll a child in a daycare I start
| by wandering around the facilities with a camera man and
| then I demand to see the children. But sure is suspicious
| that this place has no kids in it when I visit it outside
| it's posted operation hours.
|
| Nick did a day worth of shooting, didn't follow up, and
| didn't check basic things like hours of operation.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right, everybody, especially the author of this piece,
| agrees that what Shirley did was bad and stupid. And also
| unnecessary, because we had documentary evidence from the
| Minnesota government itself showing the scale of the
| fraud here.
| notahacker wrote:
| I doubt Patrick is the world's biggest Nick Shirley fan,
| but that's not really how it's conveyed in the article.
|
| Shirley gets acknowledged to have "poor epistemic
| standards" (which is an almost euphemistic way of
| describing his approach) but Patrick goes on to say that
| "the _journalism_ develops one bit of evidence.... " and
| even appears to insinuate the NYT erred in reporting it
| in the context of the Minnesota government's response
| that the state's own compliance checks had found them
| open shortly afterwards but that some of them were under
| investigation.
|
| There's an interesting point to be made that detailed,
| bipartisan evidence collected by suitably qualified
| officials that some daycenters were closed at times they
| were claimed to be open gets less attention than a
| YouTuber with an agenda rocking up at nurseries at what
| may or may not have been their opening times, but that's
| not how it's actually expressed. Rather it seems to be
| arguing for face value judgements of his video and
| against journalists that felt compelled to point out that
| whilst evidence of daycare fraud by Somalis in Minnesota
| definitely existed, Shirley's videos probably shouldn't
| be considered part of it.
| patio11 wrote:
| The way I phrased that point was "The investigators
| allege repeatedly visiting daycare centers which did not,
| factually, have children physically present at the
| facility despite reimbursement paperwork identifying
| specific children being present at that specific time.
| The investigators demonstrated these lies on timestamped
| video, and perhaps in another life would have been
| YouTube stars."
| dtornabene wrote:
| He does not in fact call what Shirley did "bad and
| stupid". He calls him a journalist!
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> I start by wandering around the facilities with a
| camera man_
|
| How does one wandering around with a camera affect the
| fact that the daycares had blacked out or boarded up
| windows, misspelled signs, and if you went in to ask for
| enrollment then 3 angry men would come out shouting at
| you?
|
| Do you even hear yourself? Are they Schrodinger's
| daycares? Do they become compliant the moment you stop
| filming them?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Tell you what, go get a camera man and go visit your
| local daycare center. Post on youtube how they respond.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| You're beating it around the bush going offtopic and
| ignoring my question:
|
| How does having a camera impact the daycare having a
| misspelled sign and boarded up windows?
| cogman10 wrote:
| > You're beating it around the bush going offtopic and
| ignoring my question:
|
| No I'm not, you just don't like the answer. But at least
| you've edited to remove the "3 guys yelling at you"
| portion as I think even you can see how that might be a
| reasonable thing to do to a creep going around you
| business filming everything.
|
| > daycare having a misspelled sign and boarded up
| windows?
|
| The answer to this question is simple, a poor one. And I
| suspect that a daycare that primarily gets it's funds
| from people using government welfare likely isn't rolling
| in the dough. Broken windows are expensive to fix, boards
| are cheap. A misspelled sign is embarrassing but again
| could easily be something that the owner of the
| facilities just wasn't assed to pay to replace and
| properly fix.
|
| My spouse worked for years in that sort of daycare which
| is why it's unsurprising to me that a daycare in that
| state exists. She, for example, did a full summer in Utah
| without AC while the kids were fed baloney sandwiches
| every day. Her's wasn't a daycare committing fraud, it
| was just an owner that was cutting costs at every corner
| to make sure their own personal wealth wasn't impacted.
|
| A shitty daycare isn't an indicator of fraud. It's an
| indicator that the state has low regulation standards for
| daycares. Lots of states have that, and a lot of these
| places end up staying in operation because states decide
| that keeping open an F grade daycare is cheap and better
| for the community vs closing it because it's crap
| quality. They certainly don't often want to take control
| of such a business and they know a competently ran one
| isn't likely to replace it if it is shutdown.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> My spouse worked for years in that sort of daycare _
|
| Was your spouse also one of the all-male crews that those
| totally-not-a-scam MN daycares typically have?
|
| How many legit daycares have you ever seen where the
| staff is all men? And aggressive men at that. Just think
| about it for 3 seconds.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Now you are going off topic. I suspect because you don't
| like a reasonable answer that doesn't fit your fraud
| narrative.
|
| Men can work at daycares but also we have no clue what
| those guys relationship to the business was.
|
| Just think about it for 3 seconds.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> Now you are going off topic. [...] Men can work at
| daycares _
|
| No mate, YOU are going offtopic. I never said men CAN'T
| work daycares, I asked you "How many legit daycares have
| you ever seen where the staff is ALL-MEN?". This is the
| n'th time in this thread you misread what I say, to the
| point I can confidently say you're intentionally doing
| this in bad faith to derail the conversation, which is
| why this will be my last reply to you.
|
| _> also we have no clue what those guys relationship to
| the business was._
|
| Except they also interviewed MN citizens who live in the
| area who also said they never saw any kids or women at
| that daycare with the misspelled "Learing" sign.
|
| How many more points on the graph that form a line do you
| need to admit that it's an obvious scam?
|
| _> I suspect because you don't like a reasonable answer
| that doesn't fit your fraud narrative._
|
| I just look at the evidence and use critical thinking to
| judge. You're the one not bringing any evidence to
| support your not-a-scam narrative and intentionally
| misreading my questions to give bad faith offtopic
| answers.
|
| _> Just think about it for 3 seconds._
|
| Parroting someone is flattering but not a sign of good
| arguing skills.
| zahlman wrote:
| I predict that they would not spontaneously board up the
| windows and introduce spelling errors into their signage.
| tptacek wrote:
| To put it mildly I don't think there's a consensus among
| Minnesota DFL-types who paid attention to this that the
| state at any point took the matter seriously in proportion
| to its severity. There's a lot of evidence that they did
| the opposite thing. I try to avoid openly identifying my
| partisan commitments (see this whole thread for why) but:
| this shit is what we Democrats constantly dunk on the GOP
| for doing, and we're not acquitting ourselves well here.
|
| It's annoying that we're talking about this in these terms,
| because the article is about public services fraud, and
| it's mostly technical, and it's an interesting subject. We
| shouldn't have to debate Tim Walz to engage with it.
| zahlman wrote:
| The volume of prosecution that had occurred or was slated
| to occur was laughable compared to the amount of fraud
| known or reasonably believed to have occurred. When it _is_
| done at scale, prosecution is inefficient and much less
| effective than reforming processes so as to preempt fraud,
| which is not something that happened, as evidenced by the
| continuing fraud after the initial round of prosecution.
|
| FTA:
|
| > So-called "pay-and-chase", where we put the burden on the
| government to disallow payments for violations
| retrospectively, has been enormously expensive and
| ineffective. Civil liability bounces off of exists-only-to-
| defraud LLC. Criminal prosecutions, among the most
| expensive kinds of intervention the government is capable
| of doing short of kinetic war, result in only a ~20%
| reduction in fraudulent behavior. Rearchitecting the
| process to require prior authorization resulted in an
| "immediate and permanent" 68% reduction. (I commend to you
| this research on Medicare fraud regarding dialysis
| transport. And yes, the team did some interesting work to
| distinguish fraudulent from legitimate usage of the
| program. Non-emergency transport for dialysis specifically
| had exploded in reimbursements--see Figure 1-- not because
| American kidneys suddenly got worse but because fraudsters
| adversarially targeted an identified weakness in Medicare.)
| Brybry wrote:
| He cites the 50% number from Jay Swanson, a CCAP
| Investigations Unit manager, and then dismisses criticism of
| the number by saying the criticism requires an unreasonable
| standard (only criminal convictions).
|
| But if you read the cited source of how Swanson came up with
| that number he said it wasn't just for over-billing (claiming
| more kids than the places actually had).
|
| Instead, by his estimation, the employees working are not
| actually working because 'children are unsupervised, running
| from room to room while adult "employees" spend hours in
| hallways chatting with other adults' and so _all_ of the
| funds to those providers are fraudulent. [1]
|
| I think it's pretty easy to criticize the logic for that 50%
| fraud rate number without requiring criminal convictions.
|
| [1]
| https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/ccap.pdf#page=16
| tptacek wrote:
| This is a great argument. I wish this is what we were
| discussing rather than Nick Shirley and the partisan
| politics of the issue.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Oddly enough starting an article with a defense of Nick
| Shirley leads to the comments on an article being about
| that.
| tptacek wrote:
| I mean, I wouldn't have led off that way either, but I
| know what Patrick is talking about and I read the
| article. I genuinely believe the current administration
| is the worst in the history of the country, and I also
| believe that to oppose it effectively we need every
| government body we run to be completely on the ball, so
| it's really dispiriting to see people reflexively defend
| misconduct and incompetence. That shouldn't be a habit we
| share with the party we oppose.
|
| (I can't speak for Patrick's politics, only for mine.)
| zahlman wrote:
| > What is the issue? That these investigations should have been
| more prominently featured in the mainstream news?
|
| Important points throughout the article include: relatively
| little prosecution or enforcement occurred despite the
| awareness of rampant fraud; officials were naive to the common
| wisdom in fraud-prevention circles that people committing fraud
| in the past correlates strongly with the same individuals
| committing fraud in the future; "pay-and-chase" policies don't
| preempt funding flows to individuals suspected of fraud until
| it's established and feel the need to account for every
| fraudulent dollar instead of just blacklisting known bad actors
| the way that actual financial institutions do. FTA in
| particular, all emphasis FTA:
|
| > For example, the primary evidence of a child attending a day-
| care was a handwritten sign-in sheet of minimal probative
| value. Prosecutors referred to them as "almost comical" and
| "useless." They were routinely fraudulently filled out by a 17
| year old "signing" for dozens of parents sequentially in the
| same handwriting, excepting cases where they were _simply
| empty_.
|
| > To refute this "evidence", the state forced itself to do
| weeks of stakeouts, producing hundreds of hours of video
| recording, after which it laboriously reconstructed exact
| counts of children seen entering/exiting a facility, compared
| it with the billing records, and then invoiced the centers
| _only for proven overbilling_.
|
| > On general industry knowledge, if you are selected for
| examination in e.g. your credit card processing account, and
| your submission of evidence is "Oh yeah, those transactions are
| ones we customarily paperwork with a 17 year old committing
| obvious fraud", your account _will be swiftly closed_. The
| financial institution doesn't have to reach a conclusion about
| every dollar which has ever flowed through your account. What
| actual purpose would there be in shutting the barn door after
| the horse has left? The only interesting question is what
| you'll be doing tomorrow, and clearly what you intend to do
| tomorrow _is fraud_.
|
| Moving on,
|
| > I don't think the serious response to Nick Shirley's
| "journalism" is that there was no fraud; rather, it's that he
| came into the situation with a thinly veiled agenda and fed his
| audience exactly what they wanted to hear.
|
| My take is that there's no good reason to suspect that, except
| for holding an opposed thinly veiled agenda. And there is no
| serious dispute of the fact that billions of dollars of fraud
| occurred.
|
| > Did his video make it more or less likely that we'll be able
| to investigate and resolve the fraud situation in MN?
|
| It clearly made it more likely, as demonstrated by federal
| senate hearings that have extensively referenced the video
| (I've seen a segment where a senator literally had a prop photo
| of the "Quality Learing Center").
|
| > the fact that they seized on this as an excuse to send in
| 3000 ICE agents is not exactly promising.
|
| Your premise is that a YouTube video published Dec 26, 2025
| somehow motivated a federal law enforcement action that
| commenced on Dec 4, 2025. Also, this claim conflates ICE with
| CBP. Also, per Wikipedia, out of thousands of arrests, only 23
| have been of Somalis; and it's been abundantly clear in all the
| press functions that the _targets_ have overwhelmingly been
| Hispanic -- because they 're overwhelmingly represented among
| illegal immigrants in the US, including in MN.
| comex wrote:
| > Your premise is that a YouTube video published Dec 26, 2025
| somehow motivated a federal law enforcement action that
| commenced on Dec 4, 2025.
|
| The surge of ~2,000 officers only happened around Jan 5-6,
| 2026. And this happened after the video in question was
| reposted by J.D. Vance and referenced by Kash Patel.
|
| It's true that Operation Metro Surge as a whole started a
| month earlier. But, zooming out from that specific video, the
| operation was from the start motivated by the fraud scandal,
| according to reliable sources [1]. Official statements around
| this time of the later surge also referenced the fraud
| scandal [2]. Meanwhile, Trump delivered several speeches
| during this time complaining in racist terms about Somalis in
| general.
|
| It's also true that the actual activity of Operation Metro
| Surge is mostly unrelated to the fraud. But that's the whole
| point! The administration seized on the fraud, and later
| seized on that specific video, as an excuse to send in ICE
| and CBP agents to do something completely different. As the
| parent said, this probably did not "make it more [..] likely
| that we'll be able to investigate and resolve the fraud
| situation in MN". Or if it did, it did so very inefficiently
| compared to other possible approaches such as getting the FBI
| to focus on it (which also happened). The surge did focus
| public attention on the issue, which might encourage local
| officials to resolve it. But it also massively poisoned the
| well. How much you want to talk about the fraud issue is now
| a proxy for how much you _don't_ want to talk about what
| liberals see as the much larger issue of abuses by ICE/CBP.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/us/politics/ice-
| somali-mi...
|
| [2] https://x.com/KristiNoem/status/2005687345895645204
| advisedwang wrote:
| The reason that "the left" is rolling eyes at the fuss being made
| over this fraud is:
|
| 1. The fraud is in fact being investigated, people are being
| charged and convicted. Despite this, rightwing media institutions
| are acting as if fraud is being ignored and maybe even covered up
| and encouraged because
|
| 2. This is just another example of the decades long project by
| those who have lots of money and don't want to see it go to takes
| to paint social programs as a money-pipe from good hardworking
| people to fraud and waste.
| zahlman wrote:
| > The fraud is in fact being investigated, people are being
| charged and convicted.
|
| And as explained in TFA, this is inefficient and ineffective
| even in theory:
|
| > So-called "pay-and-chase", where we put the burden on the
| government to disallow payments for violations retrospectively,
| has been enormously expensive and ineffective. Civil liability
| bounces off of exists-only-to-defraud LLC. Criminal
| prosecutions, among the most expensive kinds of intervention
| the government is capable of doing short of kinetic war, result
| in only a ~20% reduction in fraudulent behavior. Rearchitecting
| the process to require prior authorization resulted in an
| "immediate and permanent" 68% reduction.
|
| > Despite this, rightwing media institutions are acting as if
| fraud is being ignored and maybe even covered up and encouraged
| because
|
| Which is a reasonable characterization of the situation given
| the scale of the fraud and the fact that it's still going on,
| in such a blatant manner.
|
| We're talking about total fraud on the order of $10b, and some
| significant fraction of that money has presumably been sent
| back to Somalia. We're talking here about amounts that would
| represent a significant percentage _of Somalia 's entire GDP_
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia#Economy).
|
| > This is just another example of the decades long project by
| those who have lots of money and don't want to see it go to
| takes to paint social programs as a money-pipe from good
| hardworking people to fraud and waste.
|
| "The left" clearly has a vested interest in that _not
| happening_ ; therefore, it is also in their interest to _take
| appropriate actions against fraud_ as they might learn about
| from the financial industry.
| arduanika wrote:
| Fair enough. But the reason that "the right" is not letting go
| of the story is:
|
| 1. The fraud was _not_ in fact being investigated seriously
| enough until this kid, even while lacking the basics of
| journalism as Patrick describes here, forced the issue.
|
| 2. This is just another example of the decades long trend where
| more and more bad patterns and outcomes can persist for far too
| long because the normal checks are fended off with spurious
| accusations of racism.
|
| There's some variation on how "the right" would handle (2). The
| center-right wants to shore up our culture of color-blindness
| to patch these vulnerabilities. The far-right wants to do away
| with egalitarianism altogether, and just go back to plain old
| racism. If we can't figure out the former, we might well end up
| with the latter.
|
| (My reading is that Patrick falls squarely in the "center-
| right" here, fwiw. Then again, it can be hard to decode his
| exact subtext from under all the polite circumlocutions.
| Reading his stuff is something of an acquired skill and/or
| taste.)
| kristjansson wrote:
| On Shirely, and the reaction: there's a markedly different
| valence to a fraud 'investigation' seeking to arrest, try,
| convict, and imprison _fraudsters_ vs one seeking (through a thin
| veil) to mar an entire community and bring about their violent
| dispossession at the hands of unaccountable little green men. It
| would not be an unreasonable person that strongly supports the
| former and opposes the latter.
| arduanika wrote:
| Hmm, you completely lost me at "little green men". What/who is
| this referring to? Extraterrestrials?
| vharuck wrote:
| The last time I heard about "little green men" (other than
| ETs) was to describe obviously-but-unofficially Russian
| soldiers who invaded Crimea in 2014 and claimed to be natives
| who wanted Russia to annex the region.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Crimea
|
| I guess it's now being used as pejorative against groups of
| vaguely military style. Like the DHS agents conducting Metro
| Surge.
| buerkle wrote:
| ICE agents cosplaying as an army
| almosthere wrote:
| He was able to show all the evidence David had. The evidence had
| to be leaked out of the government of MN because it was silent
| whistleblowers that had been turned down after doing internal
| investigations. The government of MN may be complicit in all of
| this. It could be that they were trying to be anti-racist, which
| is why a lot of the fraud is specifically being performed by
| Somalians. But it can also be pay for vote fraud - where the
| leaders of the Somalian communities tell everyone who to vote
| for, and they are doing this because Walz (or some other people)
| are shielding the daycares from being shut down.
|
| There is literally nothing wrong with stating this, we ought not
| be political about this. There may also be conservatives being
| elevated from Fraud as well, all of it should be routed.
|
| At this point it definitely warrants deep investigations, not
| more articles trying to destroy a 23 year old that went viral.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Look, this is a mostly reasonable, if slightly vague, article
| about investigating fraud and mechanisms by which you do so.
|
| What it lacks is any concrete suggestion as to what should
| change, beyond some vague allusions that perhaps racial/ethnic
| profiling should make a comeback.
|
| The real problem here though is that the entire article ignores
| the duty[1] the government owes its citizens.
|
| It's "fine"[2] if stripe or visa or whoever flips a coin and if
| it's tails they decide this person isn't allowed to be a customer
| of their company. The company loses any profit they might have
| made and life goes on.
|
| It's considerably more problematic when the government refuses to
| serve a citizen (or even worse, levies an accusation).
|
| There's some famous quotes about how many innocent people are
| appropriate to harm in the pursuit of the guilty but I'll leave
| those up to the reader.
|
| [1] duty feels like too weak of a word here. Obligation?
| Requirement? The only reason the government even exists is to
| benefit the citizens.
|
| [2] it becomes rapidly less fine when the company essentially has
| a monopoly over a system requires to participate in modern life,
| but that's a different topic...
| mlyle wrote:
| > [2] it becomes rapidly less fine when the company essentially
| has a monopoly over a system requires to participate in modern
| life, but that's a different topic...
|
| That's the real thing here. Concentrated power is scary--
| whether it's the federal government, Visa/Mastercard, Google,
| etc.
|
| At least power concentrated under the control of a government
| _might_ be held accountable to the people. With private,
| concentrated power: fat chance.
| wredcoll wrote:
| I'm working on making it a thing, but my theory is that power
| can't be destroyed, merely transferred, and in most cases I'd
| rather have the power be vested in a democratic government.
| mlyle wrote:
| The best option is it being decentralized and diffuse and
| operating through market mechanisms.
|
| If that leads to bad outcomes, then government is a next
| best choice.
|
| (Of course, all the special cases, natural monopoly, etc
| etc etc-- government has a role in addressing the bad
| outcomes associated with those).
| ejiblabahaba wrote:
| Suppose an asteroid strikes the Earth and all human life
| becomes extinct. What power, specifically, has been
| transferred, and to where?
| 650 wrote:
| This article isn't vague at all. It references various sources,
| and uses precise language (if you can recognize it) to convey
| its message. Yes, innocent until proven guilty, but the fact
| that the government has "lesser" educated Fraud analysts,
| chooses to ask for reimbursement of overbilling, and many more
| nuanced topics talked about in the article is not vague.
| wredcoll wrote:
| So what is supposed to change based on that? Pay more for
| better fraud investigators? Accept a lower burden of proof
| like stripe et al do? What's the take away here?
| nickff wrote:
| If you want a TLDR; style take-away, the last paragraph is
| a good place to start:
|
| > _" Responsible actors in civil society have a mandate to
| aggressively detect and interdict fraud. If they do not,
| they cede the field to irresponsible demagogues. They will
| not be careful in their conclusions. They will not be
| gentle in their proposals. They will not carefully weigh
| consequences upon the innocent. But they will be telling a
| truth that the great and the good are not.
|
| The public will believe them, because the public believes
| its lying eyes."_
| wredcoll wrote:
| Ahh, reminds me of the classic appeal.
|
| "If you don't do <fascist thing> now, the real fascists
| will take over!"
| nickff wrote:
| Is auditing state-subsidized service providers fascistic?
|
| From this piece, it seems like the state auditor detected
| some fraud, but there was little follow-up from either
| the state or 'responsible journalists', so the
| sensationalists came in with a (predictably) extreme
| take, after which everyone started slinging mud. The
| sensationalism could have been forestalled by better
| auditing by the state, or journalism by large-scale
| media. I am not sure what part of this is fascist.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Except the article does mention a whole bunch of people
| who were investigated, arrested and convicted.
|
| So again, now what? Are they supposed to hire more
| investigators? Work harder? Require less evidence? What
| part of the system is supposed to change and how?
| em-bee wrote:
| _to aggressively detect and interdict fraud_
|
| is fascistic, because being aggressive hurts those that
| want to do it right but are not trusted. an aspect of
| fascism is to not trust its own people.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Posts like this make it clearer to me every day why Trump
| won twice
| sdwr wrote:
| It's very indirect. The message is "the government is soft on
| fraud, partially because of liberal values", but the author
| does everything possible to not actually say it.
| bootsmann wrote:
| It references sources that don't claim what it says they do.
| Notably the Minnesota report alleging 50% fraud does not say
| that.
| skybrian wrote:
| McKenzie uses paraphrases to avoid writing certain keywords.
| For example, he never writes "DOGE" or "Elon Musk" in this
| article. Instead, he writes "We had a poorly-calibrated
| federal initiative led by a charismatic tech entrepreneur."
|
| If you've been reading the news then you can decode these
| paraphrases, but they do make his articles significantly
| harder to read.
|
| I'm tempted to ask an LLM to replace them with more
| straightforward references.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| I've called the phenomenon of private corporations refusing
| service the "Maoists in the Risk Department" in the past.
|
| The reason why risk departments all inevitably reinvent Maoism
| is because the only effective enforcement mechanism they have
| is to refuse service. Fraudsters are fundamentally illegible to
| businesses of this size. And as the article stated, recidivism
| rates in fraud are high enough that someone caught doing fraud
| should never be given the time of day ever again. So the
| easiest strategy is to pick some heuristics that catch
| recidivist fraudsters and keep them a jealously guarded secret.
|
| This calculus falls apart for the government. If someone rips
| the government off, they can arrest them, compel the production
| of documents from every third party they've interacted with,
| and throw them in jail where they won't be able to rip anyone
| else off for decades. Obviously, if we gave the Risk Department
| Maoists these same permissions, we'd be living under tyranny.
|
| Well, more tyranny than we already live under.
|
| But at the same time, the fact that we have these legal powers
| makes Risk Maoism largely _obsolete_. We don 't need to
| repeatedly reinvestigate the same people for the same crime
| "just in case".
| wredcoll wrote:
| My take is that we lack granular punishments.
|
| Right now we have either some form of fine, and while this
| can be incredibly painful, usually is not, then we go
| straight to like multiyear prison sentences, with perhaps a
| few suspended sentences in between there.
|
| I dunno, maybe a world where "you did a small bank fraud so
| now you have some kind of antifraud system attached to you"
| is genuinely worse than the one we live in now, but the idea
| of being able to target more specific aspects of someone
| rather than just prison/not prison seems interesting.
|
| I guess we have stuff like "not allowed to use a computer for
| 5 years" (thanks hackers movie!), dunno how effective or
| practical that is.
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| Take a look at the actual 2019 OLA report McKenzie cites. This
| characterization is wrong in ways that matter.
|
| The "50% fraud" claim? It comes from one investigator (Swanson)
| using what the OLA explicitly calls "a higher level view, a view
| that does not require the kind of proof needed in a criminal or
| administrative proceeding." His methodology? If kids are poorly
| supervised, "running from room to room while adult employees
| spend hours in hallways chatting".... he counts the entire
| payment as fraud. That's not "billing for phantom children" it's
| "I don't like how this daycare is run."
|
| The OLA's actual finding: "We did not find evidence to
| substantiate the allegation that the level of CCAP fraud in
| Minnesota is $100 million annually." Proven fraud over several
| years was $5-6 million.
|
| Terrorism? "We were unable to substantiate the allegation that
| individuals in Minnesota sent CCAP fraud money to a foreign
| country where a terrorist organization obtained and used the
| money." They checked with the U.S. Attorney's Office.. none of
| Minnesota's terrorism cases involved CCAP money.
|
| McKenzie writes "beyond intellectually serious dispute" about
| claims the primary source he cites explicitly could not
| substantiate.
|
| Meanwhile the president is posting videos of the Obamas as apes
| and calling Somalis "garbage", having federal prosecutors
| throwing out arbitrary $9 billion estimates in press conferences.
|
| See for yourself:
| https://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/sreview/ccap.pdf
| patio11 wrote:
| The Swanson memo memorializes the consensus of his
| investigatory group and, put to question by OLA and
| legislators, they stick with that story:
|
| Page 14 of PDF:
|
| _[The OLA] did not find evidence to substantiate Stillman's
| allegation that there is $100 million in CCAP fraud annually.
| We did, on the other hand, find that the state's CCAP fraud
| investigators generally agree with Stillman's opinions about
| the level of CCAP fraud, as well as why it is so pervasive._
|
| (Stillman is a line level investigator who gave a media
| statement which was explosive. Swanson, who authored in the
| internal memo, was his manager.)
|
| I do mention that other officials only agreed to characterize
| as fraud fraud which had resulted in convictions. We now, years
| later, have nine figures just from the convictions (and guilty
| pleas). These officials pointedly refuse to put any number on
| fraud other than the number incident to convictions.
|
| Moreover: you should be _very clearly correct_ if you accuse
| someone of citing a document as making claims it does not say.
| That is a serious accusation. BAM 's citation of this piece is
| "the state's own investigators believed that, over the past
| several years, greater than fifty percent of all reimbursements
| to daycare centers were fraudulent." This is _absolutely true_
| and _is in the report as claimed_.
| refulgentis wrote:
| I'm very amenable to the argument made in the blog post, but
| the tone and sidecars attached made it feel quite off, like
| if I looked into it, it'd turn out there was a rush to get
| the main idea down so we could get the sidecars attached.
|
| Spent about 30 minutes consulting the report you mention,
| OP's post, and your reply, and there's clearly issues.
|
| In the essay, you wrote that industrial-scale fraud is
| "beyond intellectually serious dispute," cited the OLA
| report, and presented the 50% figure as the finding that
| "staggers the imagination." (this should have been a tell)
|
| When challenged, you retreat to: "My citation that
| investigators _believed_ this is absolutely true. "
|
| Those are completely different claims. "An investigator
| believed X" is not "X is beyond intellectually serious
| dispute" -- especially when _the same report on the same
| pages_ says:
|
| - The OLA itself: "We did not find evidence to substantiate
| the allegation" (p. 5)
|
| - The DHS Inspector General: "I do not trust the allegation
| that 50 percent of CCAP money is being paid fraudulently" (p.
| 12)
|
| - The investigators themselves had "varying levels of
| certainty -- some thought it could be less, and some said
| they did not have enough experience to have an opinion" (p.
| 9)
|
| - Swanson explicitly used "a view that does not require the
| kind of proof needed in a criminal or administrative
| proceeding" (p. 10), counting the _entire_ payment to any
| center with poorly-supervised kids as "fraud"
|
| That's not "beyond intellectually serious dispute." It is,
| literally, a documented dispute, inside the very report you
| cite as settling the matter.
|
| And "nine figures from convictions"? That's Feeding Our
| Future, a _federal food nutrition program_. The OLA report is
| about CCAP, a _state childcare program_. Proven CCAP fraud
| remains at $5-6 million. You 're retroactively validating a
| CCAP claim with convictions from a different program.
| patio11 wrote:
| FoF claimed to supply meals at the same physical locations
| as CCAP and paid the same owners. As mentioned, one of nine
| of the operators profiled, who was previously raided in an
| investigation into alleged overbilling of CCAP, received
| $1.5M from FoF. FoF is in fact not a federal nutrition
| program but actually the name of a non-profit which
| received grants from a federal nutrition program for
| forwarding to third parties. CCAP is also funded by federal
| block funding.
| refulgentis wrote:
| The operator overlap is real, and the correction that FoF
| is a non-profit rather than a federal program is fair.
| I'll take both points.
|
| But look at what's happened across this exchange:
|
| Essay: Industrial-scale CCAP fraud is "beyond
| intellectually serious dispute." The evidence: the OLA
| report shows investigators believed 50%+ of
| reimbursements were fraudulent.
|
| When challenged that the OLA explicitly could not
| substantiate $100M and proven fraud was $5-6M: you
| retreat to "my citation that investigators believed this
| is absolutely true and is in the report as claimed."
|
| When challenged that "investigators believed X" [?] "X is
| beyond intellectually serious dispute" -- especially when
| the same report documents the IG saying "I do not trust
| the allegation," DHS leadership calling $100M "not
| credible," investigators having "varying levels of
| certainty" with some having "not enough experience to
| have an opinion," and the OLA itself saying "we cannot
| offer a reliable estimate": you pivot to FoF operator
| overlap.
|
| You still haven't addressed the actual critique. The
| overlap proves that some fraudsters work across programs.
| Not disputed, not surprising, and consistent with your
| essay's point about fraud lifecycles. What it doesn't do
| is retroactively substantiate Swanson's 50% CCAP figure.
| His methodology, spelled out in the very email the OLA
| appended, counted _all_ payments to any center where
| children were poorly supervised as 100% fraudulent, a
| standard he himself distinguished from "the kind of
| proof needed in a criminal or administrative proceeding."
| FoF fraud was fabricating meal claims for meals never
| served. CCAP fraud is billing for children not present.
| Different programs, different billing mechanisms,
| different oversight bodies (MDE vs. DHS), different
| proven scales by orders of magnitude. That some of the
| same people ran both doesn't collapse the distinction.
|
| "CCAP is also funded by federal block funding" seems
| designed to blur a line that matters. Many programs are
| federally funded. That doesn't make convictions in one
| program evidence of the fraud rate in another.
|
| Here's what's frustrating: I think the essay's core
| argument is genuinely strong, and it doesn't need the
| overclaim. The OLA report is already damning on its own
| honest terms: proven fraud of $5-6M in a program with
| paper sign-in sheets prosecutors called "almost comical,"
| no electronic attendance verification, 60-day billing
| windows, a certification statement _removed_ from billing
| forms in 2013, and the investigators themselves saying
| centers "open faster than they can close the existing
| ones down." The report makes it clear fraud was likely
| substantially higher than proven convictions. That's
| already a devastating indictment of program oversight.
| Your argument about base rates, weak controls, and
| Shirley fishing in a troubled pond all follows from
| _that_ , from the report as it actually reads.
|
| But "likely substantially higher than $5-6M, in a program
| with terrible controls" is a very different claim than
| "50%+ fraud, beyond intellectually serious dispute." Your
| essay presents the latter. The report supports the
| former. And the gap matters, because the essay is being
| read right now, today. in a context where the president
| is calling Somalis "garbage," prosecutors are throwing
| out $9 billion estimates in press conferences, and five
| states just had billions in child care funding frozen.
| Overstating what the evidence supports isn't a minor
| rhetorical choice in that environment. It's exactly the
| kind of epistemic failure the essay warns about when it
| talks about "irresponsible demagogues" filling the
| vacuum.
| patio11 wrote:
| The thing which is beyond intellectually serious dispute
| is industrial-scaled fraud.
|
| You keep wanting to make me "own" the CCAP's estimate. I
| will not reciprocally try to make you "own" $5 million,
| because I am charitable and because history has been
| unkind to the officials who made it.
|
| I _do_ ask you to own: "Minnesota HAS NOT suffered
| industrial-scale fraud across several social programs."
| Otherwise this is judging a high school debate
| competition, and I've had better.
| cynicalkane wrote:
| OP didn't claim you of misrepresenting facts in the document
| directly; OP claimed you of grossly mischaracterizing those
| facts in order to support claims the document does not
| support. The document is cited as supporting massive fraud
| "beyond intellectually serious dispute" while the scale of
| the fraud is disputed in the cited document.
|
| But, on the other hand, I suppose intellectually serious
| dispute requires both sides to be intellectually serious. One
| good step in that direction would be to arrange one's
| citations such that they are supporting the claims you are
| citing them for.
|
| I will also remark, as others have, that it's odd to make a
| big deal about this particular fraud when there's a lot more
| fraud happening a lot more obviously in a lot more of the
| nation. This is not to question Minnesota officials who are,
| rightly and appropriately, investigating suspected fraud in
| their zone of investigation; but it is worth questioning
| voices who have, apropos of nothing I can discern, made
| decisions about what's important to talk about and what
| isn't, and further made decisions to misrepresent allegations
| in alignment with people who very aggressively lie for evil
| reasons. As others have pointed out, the essay's core is
| seemingly cromulent, and it doesn't need you to do that.
| patio11 wrote:
| <LLC voice> We have reviewed your feedback on our editorial
| choices, and are comfortable that we have characterized the
| claims in the report accurately. We stand by "Minnesota has
| suffered a decade-long campaign of industrial-scale fraud
| against several social programs. This is beyond
| intellectually serious dispute." This is editorial
| analysis, informed--as is stated in the plain text--by the
| experience of several programs. Feeding our Future, for
| example, is cited in the piece, with analysis. It has
| resulted in dozens of convictions and guilty pleas, and
| federal prosecutors characterize it as having defrauded the
| public of nine figures.
|
| You are welcome to your own opinion as to what could
| motivate a publication which routinely writes about fraud
| and finance to write about fraud and finance. Past issues
| you may enjoy include a year-long investigation into a
| single incident of fraud in NYC, a topological look at the
| fraud supply chain in credit cards, discussions of how the
| FTX fraud was uniquely enabled by their partner bank
| failing to properly configure their AML engine, and
| similar. </LLC voice>
| zahlman wrote:
| Seriously, it's beyond amazing how much mud this thread
| has been flinging at you. If the analysis you've offered
| is somehow not above board, it seems impossible to point
| out the clear facts of the matter in a way that nobody
| would object to.
| kristjansson wrote:
| > Responsible actors in civil society have a mandate to
| aggressively detect and interdict fraud. If they do not, they
| cede the field to irresponsible demagogues. They will not be
| careful in their conclusions. They will not be gentle in their
| proposals. They will not carefully weigh consequences upon the
| innocent. But they will be telling a truth that the great and the
| good are not.
|
| Leaving this to the conclusion does the piece a disservice. One
| can quibble (and it would be good to here) the extent to which
| the government isn't pursuing the sorts of fraud discussed, but
| this as a thesis makes clearer the argument throughout for
| earlier and more aggressive pursuit.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Instead of giving parents vouchers, that they then use at a
| fraudulent daycare, in exchange for a fake job, while they take
| care of their children at home, parents should just get money, so
| that they can stay home taking care of their children if they
| prefer that.
| Muromec wrote:
| Or get a proper kindergarten run by the government. Radical
| idea, I know
| sakopov wrote:
| I never understood why we have public schools but not public
| kindergartens.
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