People who cheated FEMA are getting caught

Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four years ago this week. It just so happens that people are still getting caught today for trying to trick the government into giving them thousands of dollars for rescue money when they didn’t even have a residence on the coast.

Living close to Memphis, when the hurricane hit, many people fled here. There were a few people who were already living here that decided to cash in on some of the hardships that people who lost their homes were facing.

One woman, Jennifer Blaye from the Memphis area, was indited on federal charges for defrauding FEMA to the tune of $140,000. All the money was supposed to be for disaster relief and was meant to go to the people who actually lost every thing from the storm. However, she used false names and social security numbers to get the money. Of course, she has plead not guilty and so, she is not yet a felon, but we’ll see.

I believe that the majority of people try to do good things and not harm others, but there are always going to be a few who will cheat and scheme anyway that they can to make a few dollars. There are even people who will try to cheat the system and steal from other people if it means that they can get ahead. Those kinds of people are the few that makes the good people not want to donate to charities and hate the welfare and disability systems in our country.

I’ve been to both New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the past year and I have to say, they have both come a long way from where they were. The areas of New Orleans I saw were all pretty much the older parts of the town that stayed in tact, but on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, most of it is new and rebuilt. There isn’t anything on the coast that is old. Even the roads were new. It was just a bit eerie, even now.