Audit Finds Fraud in Post-9/11 Air Conditioner Plan

A new government audit is suggesting that the plan to replace air-conditioners damaged by dust and debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center was exposed to fraud and mismanagement.

According to an article by James Barron in The New York Times, the audit, released last week, says approximately 62 percent of the people who were reimbursed for air-quality products weren’t eligible under the plan.

The finding could mean that roughly 140,000 people used the program improperly, Dennis White, an official who worked on the audit for the Department of Homeland Security, told Barron.

Barron says because so much time had passed between the attacks and the plan administration, and because the problem was believed to be so widespread, the government offered to pay without requiring proof that the recipients had actually been affected by the catastrophe. By May 2002, he says, the program was even "promising cash advances to people who could not afford air-conditioners or air purifiers, without requiring them to present receipts."

The audit concluded that decisions by the FEMA and state officials had "greatly increased the number of apparently fraudulent applications." According to Barron, "some people who applied for - and received - money were miles from ground zero. And a program that had been budgeted for $15 million ballooned to more than $45 million."

To read Barron’s full article, click here: http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/02/news/york.html