Brickbat: Texas Two Step

A report by the Austin City Auditor's Office in Austin, Texas, found two former city employees defrauded the city government out of $980,000. Auditors found that while working for Austin Energy, Mark Ybarra made payments to 22 "fictitious vendors" that he had created, with addresses linked to himself or his relatives, and submitted fake invoices to cover it up. The report also mentioned Ybarra's wife, Ambrosia Ybarra, who previously worked for the city's Watershed Protection Department, and it singled out two Austin Energy managers for approving payments based on invoices they "should have identified as questionable or illegitimate." The couple have each been indicted by grand juries for felony theft, while the managers have not been charged.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Government employees stealing tax dollars? What could be next? Tampering with election results?

[GOD OF PENGUIN ISLAND]

Well obviously that’s impossible! Fist has gone full Qanon.

[mad.casual]

What could be next?

Things get a little more DOGE-y down in Texas?

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

Ridiculous charges. Government employees are honest hardworking people who only want to serve us.

[TJJ2000]

https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-austin-tx/
In a BLUE jurisdiction.

Why do people keep trying to believe that electing [D]illinger to STEAL from people is going to help them instead of just [D]illinger and them being at the other end of those THEFTS?

Maybe the best anyone can hope for is just to defend Individual Liberty & ensure Justice for all.

[Longtobefree]

Austin; that's the blue dot full of democrats, right?

[SRG2]

If only they'd swindled private citizens - and for more money - they'd be eligible for a Trump pardon.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Because Biden generally pardoned people who swindled money from taxpayers...

A former law partner from Illinois, Paul Daugerdas, was convicted of overseeing fraudulent tax shelters — at a cost to the government of more than $1.63 billion. The scheme generated over $7 billion of fraudulent deductions, according to prosecutors. His law firm agreed to pay a $76 million penalty. Prosecutors called Daugerdas “the most prolific, pernicious and utterly unrepentant tax cheat in United States history,” while a judge described the case as “the biggest tax fraud prosecution ever,” according to Forbes. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2014; Biden commuted his sentence.

A medical billing company owner, Elaine Lovett, of Wayne County, Michigan, was convicted in 2017 for her role in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud Medicare using false billing claims, in a takedown that included 20 Detroit-area doctors and health care workers, according to federal prosecutors. The $26 million scheme involved billing Medicare for services that were never provided and efforts to bypass the government’s probe. Lovett was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered by the federal District judge in the case to pay more than $9 million in restitution.

[Rick James]

Finally we get a brickbat on some federal fraud.