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grassman 
Group: Members
Posts: 3858
Joined: Mar. 2006
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Posted on: Jan. 16 2013,4:40 pm |
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Three people were arrested in California Tuesday for collecting fraudulent unemployment and disability benefits. To date, a total of 21 people have been charged in the $5 million scheme.
According to federal prosecutors, the conspiracy centered around a family claiming to operate several farm labor companies in Northern California. They sold fake pay stubs to other people in the community and used their companies to report false wages to the government.
Then the fake employees claimed they were laid off and used the phony pay stubs to collect unemployment benefits, disability insurance, or both.
It's what's known as a fictitious employer scheme.
The family of alleged ringleaders, including Mohammad Nawaz Khan, 56, Mohammad Adnan Khan, 31, Iqila Begum Khan, 31, and Mohammad Shahbaz Khan 56, was arrested in May. Since then, 17 more people have been charged in relation to the scheme, including the three who were arrested Tuesday.
Over the course of the conspiracy, the defendants allegedly reported wages for more than 400 separate individuals that resulted in more than 2,000 fraudulent claims for unemployment and disability benefits.
When investigators interviewed some of the individuals, many would not know the names or locations of the farms where they had supposedly worked. In some cases, their earnings would greatly exceed normal pay for agricultural workers.
The rate for picking peaches for example, was sometimes stated as high as $15 per hour.
Another red flag included a 76-year-old man who allegedly performed physically demanding work like grading and packing prunes, and said he was paid at a rate of $110 per bin.
At this point the charges are merely allegations, and the defendants are considered innocent until proven guilty.
Balkar Singh, 50, Harvinder Kaur, 37, and Harjinder Kaur Thandi, 34 of Yuba City were all arrested and arraigned Tuesday, and six other defendants will appear in court at a later date. This is the third indictment in an ongoing investigation by the FBI, the United States Department of Labor and California's Employment Development Department.
"Fraud against the employer-funded Unemployment Insurance program or the employee-funded Disability Insurance program costs all of us and will not be tolerated," Pam Harris, director of the EDD, said in a statement.
The federal government and states overpaid an estimated $14 billion in unemployment benefits in fiscal 2011, or roughly 11% of all the jobless benefits paid out, according to reports from the U.S. Labor Department. Most of those overpayments are considered mistakes.
About $1.4 billion in overpaid state benefits were attributed to fraud.
OK, we all know people that work for cash and collect. That is bad enough, now we have people coming from other countries and just plain ripping us off. 
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git er done!
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Common Citizen
Group: Members
Posts: 4818
Joined: Jul. 2006
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Posted on: Jan. 17 2013,12:13 am |
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Kind of puts a new spin on the quote, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to fill in the blank"
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twingroves
Group: Members
Posts: 599
Joined: Oct. 2007
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Posted on: Jan. 17 2013,6:58 am |
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shoot them all 
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| Post Number: 4
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Liberal
Group: Moderator
Posts: 11451
Joined: Aug. 2003
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Posted on: Jan. 17 2013,9:55 pm |
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Did I miss the part where it said they were immigrants, or are we just going by the names?
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The people are masters of both Congress and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it!
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Common Citizen
Group: Members
Posts: 4818
Joined: Jul. 2006
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Posted on: Jan. 17 2013,11:09 pm |
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Really? Where have you been?
Their names are perfectly spelled from their native lands now that it's the 21st century and we have spell checker. Unlike the names of the mass immigrants from Europe in the 19th and 20th century.
If they were 4th generation their names would have been all screwed up. 
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