Manhattan District Attorney Faulted Over September 11 Fraud Cases
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — A congressman examining waste of September 11, 2001, aid money faulted the Manhattan district attorney’s office for failing to prosecute more New Yorkers who may have scammed free air conditioners from the government after the attacks.
A House Homeland Security panel yesterday heard from officials for the Federal Emergency Management Agency who catalogued crimes large and small in the $21 billion federal relief package for New York, the first of three such hearings this week.
Federal officials said the mistakes of September 11 aid were repeated last year on a larger scale after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, leading to massive waste and misuse of taxpayer dollars.
“There is no shortage of morally bankrupt individuals who will steal money from the federal government in times of disaster. For Katrina and Rita, it appears that at least tens of thousands of individuals took advantage of the opportunity to commit fraud,” a congressional investigator, Greg Kutz, told the panel.