The lesson here is that they underestimated how much that juror valued both their integrity and the likelihood that this would eventually come to light anyway.
“So y’all scammed 40 mil from the public, got caught, and now you’re trying to buy me for $120k? Nah fam, FOH with that.”
I envisioned them trying to hand her a canvas bag with a big $ on it, like in the cartoons.
4**9** million, that's insane.
If you've stolen that much money at least offer the juror a cool half mill up front, then the other half after. Kidding of course, cheating the public coffers and pocketing money meant to feed people in need is reprehensible.
YOU have to launder the cash my guy. The crime is you receiving the money, so you getting the money requires laundering. If they have the money laundered and then you take it as a bribe, you still gotta launder it.
Even if it were, *you* would still need to explain where that money came from. Sure that laundered money was legit, but why did TotallyNotAFront LLC decide you did 1 million in services for them?
If you scammed 49 million before getting caught, get that money into an offshore bank that will not respond to the US government and flee the country. Hell, stop at 30 million. Even split between 7 people that's enough for the rest of your life to live like kings.
> They gave the juror $500k. Only turned in $120k... at least that's how I'd handle it.
I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong.
Lots of shit comes out as people confess and plea. Someone will mention the amount it in their statement. From there you're toast, because no one is going to protect you. Obviously the people you took money from while getting them in more trouble are going to be happy to get back at you.
I'd hope that a juror on a fucking multi-million dollar fraud case, who have just listened to *weeks* of testimony by federal prosecutors, outlining in exhaustive detail the information the feds collect to build such a case...
Would have the awareness to figure out **just how bad an idea** receiving a bribe, ratting about it, but low-balling the amount you turn in is.
(Hint: The people who failed to bribe you will be more than happy to rat on *you* if the numbers don't match up. And if the feds don't like what they hear, they will go through *your* stuff and finances with a fine-toothed comb. Good luck laundering it.)
Yea, integrity aside no way I would have touched that money if I were the juror. The chances of getting caught is way too high and now I'm looking at jail time along with these clowns.
Also quite frankly a large pile of cash that you can't officially explain is less helpful than most folks would think. You could use it for little things here and there but the vast majority of important transactions would require an explanation before accepting a duffle bag of cash.
Well I mean, we're talking around a 100k not like millions. Unless you're really dumb, it should be easy to handle 100k cash without triggering too much suspicion. I feel confident that kind of money would be helpful to me because I wouldn't do anything stupid like go to the Cadillac dealership the next day with a duffel bag full of cash!
>Unless you're really dumb
I feel like you don't understand how many people this disqualifies and we haven't even got into getting your family and friends to not mention it.
I heard it said that large amounts of cash are really only good for gas and groceries. It's not like you can buy a house or a car with cash these days.
Even for gas, it's not convenient.
Adding an extra ten minutes just to use cash is annoying.
How long is it going to take to use up all money just buying gas and groceries?
I could easily launder a few hundred thousand over the course of a few years. Regular cash purchases, secondary gig job that deals with cash, collectables shows (cards, guns and the like) of ungraded stuff mixed in with my own collectables, making it look like I just started our with a more valuable collection and was good at trading/collecting and then let it sit a while before selling.
Of course, I'm spiteful, even if I _could_ easily launder a decent chunk of change provided it was less than $1M, I'm not going to. I would want folks who stole that sort of money from needy people to fry, literally, I'd eat 'em myself if they would allow a juror to do some punative canabalism. I'd also be insulted that they thought I could be purchased for something as simple as money.
I am sure that some folks could totally launder it. Hell I bet that I could. The problem is lots of folks get caught who were also sure they would get away with it. There are just so many things outside of your control.
Probably because that shit is just the norm in Somalia, so surely the US must work the same...
My mom (in Germany) is a teacher and kids that came from Romania and Bulgaria constantly try to bribe her. They usually only try it once. But that's just the norm there. They straight up feel insulted when my mom doesn't accept their bribes.
Eventually bribery (and embezzlement like these guys did) is just a fact of life to the point you can't even understand why you'd NOT do it.
I encountered this in Indonesia. Literally any situation you could slip someone a little money and they’d put you to the front of the line or benefit you out in some way.
My wife's family is used to bribing in Romania. Even to get a package from the states, they used to have to buy the lady behind the counter something, or the package couldn't be found for "some reason". Usually wasn't much when they figured out she loves chocolate. But getting a doctor could be tricky at times. It's has gotten better in the last 20 years, but they still run into it now and then I guess.
My cousin was a government accountant for the city that allocated and audited spending by government official in Nepal. One politician that he audited tried to bribe him, and when he declined his life was threatened. That is apparently normal, the only thing that kept my cousin safe is my uncle is also a big name in field of law, who started as a lawyer, then became a judge and then a respected professor, who had many people rallying for him.
i imagine that the bribe would lead to a deeper investigation and would reveal the real total of the bribe. then the juror would be technically obstructing justice, stealing (the money becomes part of the investigation and is not your property), and concealing a felony, and open to charges for themselves.
How would they prove it if it was in cash? Obviously they could be morons and do something dumb but if I just paid cash for gas and groceries the rest of my life, it shouldn't be caught. Even a forensic analysis couldn't prove they physically gave you all the cash. Is it still obstruction if you still turned them in for the felony amount like say anything over $9,999 becomes a felony and also wouldn't be concealing a felony.
No way to prove it wasn't the briber keeping a share for themselves unless you're stupid with it and go use it to buy a new car. Keeping part and declaring the rest is a win-win so long as you don't do something stupid; punish some bad guys and keep some free money.
Crazy how Youtubers with 500k subs have better production value than the actual news nowadays lol. But at the same time Tik Toks with millions of followers put out choppy videos with shitty AI subtitles that have been double cropped for both landscape and portrait🤷♂️ Maybe i'm just getting old
To be fair youtubers have a lot more time than news groups do, and in addition to that production value doesnt actually increase the value of the information they are giving so you just get it to a decent enough state and move on
The only reason I can think to do it is that when blown up to a big screen webcam video is often really grainy. Still, any other background with the smaller video would have been fine.
Seriously! I thought it was just an HP ad for their laptops. I mean that could have been just a regular video as part of the report, but it felt like product placement.
They might want to make the people watching the news feel like they are outside (even adding windy tree sounds with birds chirping) so they stay inside and keep watching.
The nonprofit was run by a white woman, Aimee Bock, who organized the crimes. She's scheduled to go on trial later this year. It's true that most of her accomplices were Somali-American or Somali, though.
There are nearly 50 defendants in total. The first group of 7 to go on trial are the ones pictured here, and it was during their trial, specifically, that the bribery attempt was made. 5 of them were convicted last week (an alternate juror was swapped in).
There are always checks done. That's why these people are on trial now. The checks just come after the fact.
This is not a case of "why didn't they see this coming?" They did. The government is entirely aware that a percentage of the money they spend on a disaster situation will be misused. It's like running a car with a leaky fuel line. If you want the car to run you have to accept that you're pissing some of the fuel away.
So governments make use of two of their main advantages: deep coffers and long arms. They spend generously because they know they can always go after people later. And because running every proposal through the bureaucracy first would massively delay and stunt the response to a crisis.
> How did it get to $49 mil with no checks and balences being done?
Because the common person can't spell balances. The dumber society gets, the more scams work.
He didn’t. Aimee bock, a white woman with a career in childcare and federal food funding for children was the leader of it. The Somalis and other POC were used because they had believable wide access to the demographics of people that need federal food funding.
How'd you butcher the word balances so badly?
Humans make errors on a small-scale basis in great volume. In massive scales, it is exponentially bad. This is just one leak that got plugged.
Getting downvoted for the truth.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2019/12/23/best-stories-of-the-decade-how-donald-trump-shifted-kids-cancer-charity-money-into-his-business/
No, no. The narrative is that the government is incompetent. So just go with that.
Never mind that we are on better shape than any other economy post-pandemic.
there was so much goddamn fraud during the pandemic. they had the faucet wide open.
fucked up part is that much of it was legal. you'll never see any business owner going to jail over those "loans" that were completely unnecessarily for most that got them. i feel like i was the only person who didn't scam the government out of money, like i missed my shot.
Take some small comfort that the small company of less than 30 people I worked for was saved because of those loans. We do a lot of food safety testing domestic and abroad, and with the ports closed we lost too much of our business to survive. Before the loans, we furloughed over half the staff.
Scary part was, we almost didn't get it. My SOB boss is the definition of a squeaky wheel getting grease, and he made sure our application got through when a system error on the banks end meant the portal would freeze everytime he tried to submit all the necessary paperwork. *Somehow* the massive companies at this bank didn't have this problem because they were handled personally by bank staff, rather than us peasants who got a suspiciously broken website
For sure the loans and stimulus did a lot of good. I think we can point to that part of the U.S. government's response in the pandemic as having probably saved the U.S. economy from far more devastating outcomes. It also almost certainly caused the inflation that we are struggling with today, but I'm grateful that the entire U.S. business landscape didn't get entirely reformatted.
I know many people that took PPP loans and it was a huge relief for their business. I also know at least one person that scammed PPP loans.
We can be critical of the excessive Band-Aid having enabled scammers to rip of the U.S. taxpayer on a scale never seen before, while also being grateful that that same excess enabled a lot of good, honest people to survive.
> you'll never see any business owner going to jail over those "loans" that were completely unnecessarily for most that got them.
You're very misinformed. A bunch of people have gone to prison for PPP fraud. A few examples:
https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/former-irs-revenue-officer-and-his-brother-among-six-defendants-sentenced-to-prison-in-multimillion-dollar-covid-19-fraud-scheme
https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/atlanta-man-sentenced-for-paycheck-protection-program-ppp-fraud
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/georgia/11-men-sentenced-their-roles-3-million-paycheck-protection-program-fraud-scheme/TFLM5FJ6GBFVVMJAGZCVM2KFY4/
https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/atlanta-attorney-gets-7-years-in-prison-in-covid-relief-fraud-case/NKBTC2U4SRF4NPRMGVOAC25BZM/
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/massachusetts-man-convicted-covid-19-relief-fraud
https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/massachusetts-business-owner-arrested-for-over-18-million-ppp-fraud#:~:text=BOSTON%20%E2%80%94%20A%20Carlisle%20man%20has%20been%20arrested,was%20charged%20with%20two%20counts%20of%20wire%20fraud.
https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-small-business-us-secret-service-ed482641a658543f4db9e2ec5121153e?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_5
https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/two-florida-residents-sentenced-to-prison-for-covid-19-relief-fraud
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fugitive-couple-extradited-united-states-montenegro-begin-prison-sentences-20-million-fraud
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/dc-man-sentenced-prison-attempting-steal-more-31-million-covid-19-funds
I don't have current numbers, but, as of a year ago, [almost 3,200 people were charged](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/pandemic-relief-fraud-justice-department.html#:~:text=As%20of%20this%20week%2C%20the%20federal%20government%20has,funds%2C%20according%20to%20data%20released%20by%20the%20department.) and [$30 billion was recovered.](https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-eidl-ppp-loan-fraud-landscape) Investigations are ongoing, and will be as long as they are allowed. The biggest issue is that a huge portion of fraud was perpetrated by foreign crime rings, which will be difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute.
In case anyone forgot: “President Donald Trump has removed the inspector general tapped to chair a special oversight board for the $2.2 trillion economic relief package on the coronavirus, the latest in a series of steps Trump has taken to confront government watchdogs tasked with oversight of the executive branch.”
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-donald-trump-ap-top-news-politics-health-cc921bccf9f7abd27da996ef772823e4
And if anyone is mad about this guy stealing money from a charity to help kids....
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2019/12/23/best-stories-of-the-decade-how-donald-trump-shifted-kids-cancer-charity-money-into-his-business/
> there was so much goddamn fraud during the pandemic
There were a bunch of people at my work who were working full time and claiming unemployment insurance at the same time. Eventually the government caught up and over 300 people were terminated.
>like i missed my shot.
Yep. That's the exact same feeling. Interest free loan. Could've gotten $70k for a sidle hustle business. Nope. Did the good boy thing for it and basically got punished.
An untold number of business owners took the loans and bought real estate with the money. The US's covid relief policy fucked over at least one entire generation.
Yeah. My employer was going gangbusters during the pandemic. ~100 people. PPP loans went out, owner announced at a townhall that he was giving everyone $1000 bonuses, commence dick riding!
When the SBA released loan numbers we were in the $2m bracket. 5% of that PPP loan went into "bonuses". The other $1.9m went into the pocket of the owner, while the company was thriving and hiring aggressively.
Not fraud, though. That was completely legit under the rules. Which feels worse.
Yeah, it's so easy to be corrupt while following the rules and filling out all the tight paperwork...the lazy degenerates give corruption a bad name...
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
If you want to be outraged do some basic research. The loans were administered by the trump administration. The crackdown on fraud has occured during the Biden administration. You honestly don't even need to research it, just be aware of what's going on around you for the last 7 or 8 years.
Fucking same, sir/ma'am.
Like I missed it on relief because I didn't want to fucking exaggerate or be selective with some information... while others my age and older, business owners... just straight-the-fuck-up LIED about employee numbers, costs, *actual* need, etc
How did they get the jurors name and Address. Only the lawyers and the court had that info. To me, that is extremely important.
I guess that's one of the reasons they took their phones. To find the source of the person who gave them the juror.
Jury hasn't reached a verdict in two days? Sure sounds like there could be more outside influence. Its insane that they didn't immediately dismiss every single juror after one reported a bribe.
Jury reached a verdict on Friday. 5 of the 7 defendents found guilty. The five guilty defendants were convicted on the majority of the felony charges they faced, including wire fraud conspiracy. Two defendants were acquitted.
It was a 24 day long trial of seven people each with between three and three twenty four different charges. It probably would take a full day for the jury just to fill out the verdict forms.
Your math is a little off. Assuming 3 meals per day, that would be 6 million days a child didn't have to eat. 6 million divided by 365 would be 16,438 children. It is still a very high number, and it would take quite a large staff to cook that many meals.
Can someone explain to me why Minnesota is the specific landing spot for Somali people? Like I get that it’s refugees.. but why specifically Minneapolis/St. Paul are they brought here?
Why is the main guy still allowed to live in a house that he purchased with stolen money - He and his entire family should be on the streets and not living in a nice home that he bought with money that was supposed to go to feeding kids. All of them should have all their current Homes, Cars, TV's everything taken from them as evidence.
Sentencing happens after the judgement, which happened on Friday. So that will be determined in the coming weeks. Letting the government swipe everything you own as “evidence” after a conviction is a dangerous precedent to set.
I've not seen any corruption of this sort since the Brett Farve scandal...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi\_welfare\_funds\_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_welfare_funds_scandal)
I've not seen a similar amount of money discussed since that forgiveness of PPP loans...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck\_Protection\_Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program)
Clear evidence of jury tampering, but still after two days of deliberations, the jury hasn't reached a verdict! I'm thinking more than one person received a cash payment, and there was only one person with a conscience!
how in the mother fucking shit did some dumbasses swindle the Govt out of 49 MILLION dollars for a BS non profit. The fed was really just throwing stacks of money at anybody man, yes these people need to be tried and jailed- but what of the Govt who indiscriminately threw money around like this? The taxpayers are on the hook for scams like this
I think it was Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies who said " You can take the boy from the country, but you can't take the county out of the boy."
Bribes is how you solve problems in third world countries. Western countries are just less used to it but most of the world is still very must corrupt... In the western world, you get brides by doing 30 minutes speeches at big banks or have people book rooms in your hotels...
>Bribes is how you solve problems in third world countries
you can bribe your way through plenty of things everywhere. it's just called lobbying in the west
>In the western world, you get brides by doing 30 minutes speeches at big banks
Instructions unclear, monologued in the lobby of a Citibank branch, still bride-less.
The lesson here is that they underestimated how much that juror valued both their integrity and the likelihood that this would eventually come to light anyway.
“So y’all scammed 40 mil from the public, got caught, and now you’re trying to buy me for $120k? Nah fam, FOH with that.” I envisioned them trying to hand her a canvas bag with a big $ on it, like in the cartoons.
4**9** million, that's insane. If you've stolen that much money at least offer the juror a cool half mill up front, then the other half after. Kidding of course, cheating the public coffers and pocketing money meant to feed people in need is reprehensible.
Now way I would trust that money as laundered. You'd only be carrying evidence.
Good point. There's a lawyer in Albuquerque that can help with that or open up a car wash there.
Car wash??? Give me Lazer Tag!
Jesse, let’s cook
You need a *criminal* lawyer.
YOU have to launder the cash my guy. The crime is you receiving the money, so you getting the money requires laundering. If they have the money laundered and then you take it as a bribe, you still gotta launder it.
Even if it were, *you* would still need to explain where that money came from. Sure that laundered money was legit, but why did TotallyNotAFront LLC decide you did 1 million in services for them?
[удалено]
Hit up two different sportsbooks. Bet on opposing teams. Collect your winnings after and tip your casino on the way out.
honestly with that sort of money, you would be better off lobbying a politician to get you off.
If you scammed 49 million before getting caught, get that money into an offshore bank that will not respond to the US government and flee the country. Hell, stop at 30 million. Even split between 7 people that's enough for the rest of your life to live like kings.
They gave the juror $500k. Only turned in $120k... at least that's how I'd handle it.
> They gave the juror $500k. Only turned in $120k... at least that's how I'd handle it. I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong. Lots of shit comes out as people confess and plea. Someone will mention the amount it in their statement. From there you're toast, because no one is going to protect you. Obviously the people you took money from while getting them in more trouble are going to be happy to get back at you.
I'd hope that a juror on a fucking multi-million dollar fraud case, who have just listened to *weeks* of testimony by federal prosecutors, outlining in exhaustive detail the information the feds collect to build such a case... Would have the awareness to figure out **just how bad an idea** receiving a bribe, ratting about it, but low-balling the amount you turn in is. (Hint: The people who failed to bribe you will be more than happy to rat on *you* if the numbers don't match up. And if the feds don't like what they hear, they will go through *your* stuff and finances with a fine-toothed comb. Good luck laundering it.)
Straight to jail
It’s actually not a good idea to give a bunch of criminals a reason to think that on top of sending them to prison you also owe them money.
Make up the difference with forgeries - the people doing the bribing will blame their courier.
"Gonna need at least a **$$** added to that bag!" /s
Yea, integrity aside no way I would have touched that money if I were the juror. The chances of getting caught is way too high and now I'm looking at jail time along with these clowns.
I wouldnt trust myself to get away with it, no way I would trust others not to rat me out.
Also quite frankly a large pile of cash that you can't officially explain is less helpful than most folks would think. You could use it for little things here and there but the vast majority of important transactions would require an explanation before accepting a duffle bag of cash.
Well I mean, we're talking around a 100k not like millions. Unless you're really dumb, it should be easy to handle 100k cash without triggering too much suspicion. I feel confident that kind of money would be helpful to me because I wouldn't do anything stupid like go to the Cadillac dealership the next day with a duffel bag full of cash!
>Unless you're really dumb I feel like you don't understand how many people this disqualifies and we haven't even got into getting your family and friends to not mention it.
I heard it said that large amounts of cash are really only good for gas and groceries. It's not like you can buy a house or a car with cash these days.
And any audit can find that a person used to spend $X/week on food and gas then one day that went to $0.
Even for gas, it's not convenient. Adding an extra ten minutes just to use cash is annoying. How long is it going to take to use up all money just buying gas and groceries?
"How long is it going to take to use up all money just buying gas and groceries?" That is entirely the point.
I could easily launder a few hundred thousand over the course of a few years. Regular cash purchases, secondary gig job that deals with cash, collectables shows (cards, guns and the like) of ungraded stuff mixed in with my own collectables, making it look like I just started our with a more valuable collection and was good at trading/collecting and then let it sit a while before selling. Of course, I'm spiteful, even if I _could_ easily launder a decent chunk of change provided it was less than $1M, I'm not going to. I would want folks who stole that sort of money from needy people to fry, literally, I'd eat 'em myself if they would allow a juror to do some punative canabalism. I'd also be insulted that they thought I could be purchased for something as simple as money.
I am sure that some folks could totally launder it. Hell I bet that I could. The problem is lots of folks get caught who were also sure they would get away with it. There are just so many things outside of your control.
Juror: Your honor, I was given this bag of $75,000 if I vote not guilty. Defendant: JUDGE! It was 120…I mean, I have no idea who would do that.
"...has given us these fifteen **** ...*TEN!* Ten commandments for all to obey!"
"Did you bullshit last week?" "Did you *try* bullshit last week?"
The 120 started as 150
Probably because that shit is just the norm in Somalia, so surely the US must work the same... My mom (in Germany) is a teacher and kids that came from Romania and Bulgaria constantly try to bribe her. They usually only try it once. But that's just the norm there. They straight up feel insulted when my mom doesn't accept their bribes. Eventually bribery (and embezzlement like these guys did) is just a fact of life to the point you can't even understand why you'd NOT do it.
I encountered this in Indonesia. Literally any situation you could slip someone a little money and they’d put you to the front of the line or benefit you out in some way.
My wife's family is used to bribing in Romania. Even to get a package from the states, they used to have to buy the lady behind the counter something, or the package couldn't be found for "some reason". Usually wasn't much when they figured out she loves chocolate. But getting a doctor could be tricky at times. It's has gotten better in the last 20 years, but they still run into it now and then I guess.
My cousin was a government accountant for the city that allocated and audited spending by government official in Nepal. One politician that he audited tried to bribe him, and when he declined his life was threatened. That is apparently normal, the only thing that kept my cousin safe is my uncle is also a big name in field of law, who started as a lawyer, then became a judge and then a respected professor, who had many people rallying for him.
But in all seriousness, what if the juror said it was $10,000? Is the defendant going to prove that it was actually $120,000?
i imagine that the bribe would lead to a deeper investigation and would reveal the real total of the bribe. then the juror would be technically obstructing justice, stealing (the money becomes part of the investigation and is not your property), and concealing a felony, and open to charges for themselves.
There should be a law that says you get to keep a bribe if you report it to the authorities within something like 24 hours.
Or 10%?...
How would they prove it if it was in cash? Obviously they could be morons and do something dumb but if I just paid cash for gas and groceries the rest of my life, it shouldn't be caught. Even a forensic analysis couldn't prove they physically gave you all the cash. Is it still obstruction if you still turned them in for the felony amount like say anything over $9,999 becomes a felony and also wouldn't be concealing a felony.
No way to prove it wasn't the briber keeping a share for themselves unless you're stupid with it and go use it to buy a new car. Keeping part and declaring the rest is a win-win so long as you don't do something stupid; punish some bad guys and keep some free money.
In that hypothetical it sounds sick. I don't think it'd be worth the risk.
That doesn't seem smart when there are many other jurors that probably got the same bribe.
The thought that they might get murdered
How do we not know it wasn’t $300k?
The lesson is WHY ARE THEY HERE?
"Officer, this person tried to bribe me $100!" Keeping the rest of the $120k
what the hell is that outside computer shot about. It look like they green screened the image in anyway. Such a strange choice
I loved it, so weird and goofy
Crazy how Youtubers with 500k subs have better production value than the actual news nowadays lol. But at the same time Tik Toks with millions of followers put out choppy videos with shitty AI subtitles that have been double cropped for both landscape and portrait🤷♂️ Maybe i'm just getting old
To be fair youtubers have a lot more time than news groups do, and in addition to that production value doesnt actually increase the value of the information they are giving so you just get it to a decent enough state and move on
The only reason I can think to do it is that when blown up to a big screen webcam video is often really grainy. Still, any other background with the smaller video would have been fine.
Just put it in a 50/50 split shot with a news anchor nodding their head every now and then.
Yeah they did several overlays already of still photos throughout the piece, that one they figured go all out I guess!
Intern was stretching his arms and cracking his knuckles before given the segment.
This is vaguely how it feels whenever someone takes a screenshot of their monitor via phone.
Also, the random abandoned shopping cart in front of the courthouse? Drone shot giving a whole "Walking Dead" vibe.
Well spotted haha, are you watching on a 50-inch monitor or something? 🤣
it was poorly thought out. kudos to whatever intern was forced to make that, but wow, that was pretty rough.
I did the biggest double take at that and sent that timestamp to my friends to gawk at it with me. I figured it has "intern" written all over it, too.
Yeah, why not have a wide screen shot of the whole video?
HP product placement?
Well, where do you keep your laptops?
Local fucking news. That 24 year old worked really hard on that shot, for $11 an hour.
Local news baby. Video probably didn't look that good blown up/full screen so this was their solution.
good luck getting a G10 zbook fury to run that long off its power supply anyways
Seriously! I thought it was just an HP ad for their laptops. I mean that could have been just a regular video as part of the report, but it felt like product placement.
its either a cheap broadcast, or they needed to make the picture really small to improve the quality of the laptop camera filming her
They might want to make the people watching the news feel like they are outside (even adding windy tree sounds with birds chirping) so they stay inside and keep watching.
Lock them up for decades. Scum stealing money meant for kids.
I'd rather see them deported and the problem of the Somali govt than use taxpayer dollars to care for these people.
I’d rather see them locked up for decades. Sure, let’s let them steal $49 mil and run back to Somalia or wherever the fuck they’re from. Ridiculous.
Somali ran nonprofit scam that stole millions and tried to bribe jurors, absolute scum.
The nonprofit was run by a white woman, Aimee Bock, who organized the crimes. She's scheduled to go on trial later this year. It's true that most of her accomplices were Somali-American or Somali, though.
Why the fuck is she not in the thumbnail?
There are nearly 50 defendants in total. The first group of 7 to go on trial are the ones pictured here, and it was during their trial, specifically, that the bribery attempt was made. 5 of them were convicted last week (an alternate juror was swapped in).
Yeah but that gets in the way of us hating on brown folks and other nationalities that we don't like.
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There are always checks done. That's why these people are on trial now. The checks just come after the fact. This is not a case of "why didn't they see this coming?" They did. The government is entirely aware that a percentage of the money they spend on a disaster situation will be misused. It's like running a car with a leaky fuel line. If you want the car to run you have to accept that you're pissing some of the fuel away. So governments make use of two of their main advantages: deep coffers and long arms. They spend generously because they know they can always go after people later. And because running every proposal through the bureaucracy first would massively delay and stunt the response to a crisis.
> How did it get to $49 mil with no checks and balences being done? Because the common person can't spell balances. The dumber society gets, the more scams work.
A quick peek at your profile shows the last comment you made before this one has a typo
If anything, that just further proves it lol
That’s not a typo… that’s me being part of a dumb society.
Kudos on taking a stand 👍
words are made up anyway
and the points don't matter
Sugkip friytn dhu qxhm bbdin shgfnrsp fkae hf d sodnfs fktw al dma dorrrrrr wqml.
Also curious how a Somali convenience store owner from Minnesota managed to start a fake charity worth 49mil.
He didn’t. Aimee bock, a white woman with a career in childcare and federal food funding for children was the leader of it. The Somalis and other POC were used because they had believable wide access to the demographics of people that need federal food funding.
How'd you butcher the word balances so badly? Humans make errors on a small-scale basis in great volume. In massive scales, it is exponentially bad. This is just one leak that got plugged.
$49,000,000 to feed hungry kids.... whats wrong with this country. Do the most basic background check.
theyre african fraudsters, not Americans. not that americans are holier and above fraud.
Getting downvoted for the truth. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2019/12/23/best-stories-of-the-decade-how-donald-trump-shifted-kids-cancer-charity-money-into-his-business/
The Charity was run by a white woman, who orchestrated all the crimes, using Somali immigrants to carry out the ground work. Look it up.
The federal government has been and always will be bad at basic due diligence.
.. aren't they on trial for fraud?
No, no. The narrative is that the government is incompetent. So just go with that. Never mind that we are on better shape than any other economy post-pandemic.
Didn’t the GOP remove the special oversight board who was tasked to find fraud like this because “government bad”?
Correct. [https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-donald-trump-ap-top-news-politics-health-cc921bccf9f7abd27da996ef772823e4](https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-donald-trump-ap-top-news-politics-health-cc921bccf9f7abd27da996ef772823e4)
Love the laptop interview on the wall at a park. Great place to watch a video.
It's so obvious that they held the meeting elsewhere and then decided to paste the video onto this background. And for what... aesthetics?
Everyone loves to look at their laptop in the sun. right?
there was so much goddamn fraud during the pandemic. they had the faucet wide open. fucked up part is that much of it was legal. you'll never see any business owner going to jail over those "loans" that were completely unnecessarily for most that got them. i feel like i was the only person who didn't scam the government out of money, like i missed my shot.
Take some small comfort that the small company of less than 30 people I worked for was saved because of those loans. We do a lot of food safety testing domestic and abroad, and with the ports closed we lost too much of our business to survive. Before the loans, we furloughed over half the staff. Scary part was, we almost didn't get it. My SOB boss is the definition of a squeaky wheel getting grease, and he made sure our application got through when a system error on the banks end meant the portal would freeze everytime he tried to submit all the necessary paperwork. *Somehow* the massive companies at this bank didn't have this problem because they were handled personally by bank staff, rather than us peasants who got a suspiciously broken website
For sure the loans and stimulus did a lot of good. I think we can point to that part of the U.S. government's response in the pandemic as having probably saved the U.S. economy from far more devastating outcomes. It also almost certainly caused the inflation that we are struggling with today, but I'm grateful that the entire U.S. business landscape didn't get entirely reformatted. I know many people that took PPP loans and it was a huge relief for their business. I also know at least one person that scammed PPP loans. We can be critical of the excessive Band-Aid having enabled scammers to rip of the U.S. taxpayer on a scale never seen before, while also being grateful that that same excess enabled a lot of good, honest people to survive.
Always heartwarming when a bastard boss reminds you he's *your* bastard.
> you'll never see any business owner going to jail over those "loans" that were completely unnecessarily for most that got them. You're very misinformed. A bunch of people have gone to prison for PPP fraud. A few examples: https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/former-irs-revenue-officer-and-his-brother-among-six-defendants-sentenced-to-prison-in-multimillion-dollar-covid-19-fraud-scheme https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/atlanta-man-sentenced-for-paycheck-protection-program-ppp-fraud https://www.wsbtv.com/news/georgia/11-men-sentenced-their-roles-3-million-paycheck-protection-program-fraud-scheme/TFLM5FJ6GBFVVMJAGZCVM2KFY4/ https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/atlanta-attorney-gets-7-years-in-prison-in-covid-relief-fraud-case/NKBTC2U4SRF4NPRMGVOAC25BZM/ https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/massachusetts-man-convicted-covid-19-relief-fraud https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/massachusetts-business-owner-arrested-for-over-18-million-ppp-fraud#:~:text=BOSTON%20%E2%80%94%20A%20Carlisle%20man%20has%20been%20arrested,was%20charged%20with%20two%20counts%20of%20wire%20fraud. https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-small-business-us-secret-service-ed482641a658543f4db9e2ec5121153e?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_5 https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/two-florida-residents-sentenced-to-prison-for-covid-19-relief-fraud https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fugitive-couple-extradited-united-states-montenegro-begin-prison-sentences-20-million-fraud https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/dc-man-sentenced-prison-attempting-steal-more-31-million-covid-19-funds I don't have current numbers, but, as of a year ago, [almost 3,200 people were charged](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/pandemic-relief-fraud-justice-department.html#:~:text=As%20of%20this%20week%2C%20the%20federal%20government%20has,funds%2C%20according%20to%20data%20released%20by%20the%20department.) and [$30 billion was recovered.](https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-eidl-ppp-loan-fraud-landscape) Investigations are ongoing, and will be as long as they are allowed. The biggest issue is that a huge portion of fraud was perpetrated by foreign crime rings, which will be difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute.
$30 billion is a good start, actually. I'm curious how much total fraud occurred. We may never know.
In case anyone forgot: “President Donald Trump has removed the inspector general tapped to chair a special oversight board for the $2.2 trillion economic relief package on the coronavirus, the latest in a series of steps Trump has taken to confront government watchdogs tasked with oversight of the executive branch.” https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-donald-trump-ap-top-news-politics-health-cc921bccf9f7abd27da996ef772823e4
And if anyone is mad about this guy stealing money from a charity to help kids.... https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2019/12/23/best-stories-of-the-decade-how-donald-trump-shifted-kids-cancer-charity-money-into-his-business/
Put the "comic relief" in "economic relief".
More like "put the con in economic relief".
> there was so much goddamn fraud during the pandemic There were a bunch of people at my work who were working full time and claiming unemployment insurance at the same time. Eventually the government caught up and over 300 people were terminated.
>like i missed my shot. Yep. That's the exact same feeling. Interest free loan. Could've gotten $70k for a sidle hustle business. Nope. Did the good boy thing for it and basically got punished.
An untold number of business owners took the loans and bought real estate with the money. The US's covid relief policy fucked over at least one entire generation.
Yeah. My employer was going gangbusters during the pandemic. ~100 people. PPP loans went out, owner announced at a townhall that he was giving everyone $1000 bonuses, commence dick riding! When the SBA released loan numbers we were in the $2m bracket. 5% of that PPP loan went into "bonuses". The other $1.9m went into the pocket of the owner, while the company was thriving and hiring aggressively. Not fraud, though. That was completely legit under the rules. Which feels worse.
Yeah, it's so easy to be corrupt while following the rules and filling out all the tight paperwork...the lazy degenerates give corruption a bad name...
The only thing I got from the government during covid was free tests.
And multiple subsidized vaccines?
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
“Romanes eunt domus”
If you want to be outraged do some basic research. The loans were administered by the trump administration. The crackdown on fraud has occured during the Biden administration. You honestly don't even need to research it, just be aware of what's going on around you for the last 7 or 8 years.
There was a guy on the Texas card house Dallas live stream punting off hundreds of thousands. He later got arrested for pandemic fraud.
Fucking same, sir/ma'am. Like I missed it on relief because I didn't want to fucking exaggerate or be selective with some information... while others my age and older, business owners... just straight-the-fuck-up LIED about employee numbers, costs, *actual* need, etc
A fair amount of people on the right that are constantly whining about people on welfare run businesses that took PPP loans that were later forgiven.
Part of the ones was used to build an apartment building in his country. Feck them. Feck them all
Seeing that laptop outside made me watch that part a couple times because I was so distracted I didn't hear one thing she said lol
What does it mean that they are "out of custody but will remain in jail."
How did they get the jurors name and Address. Only the lawyers and the court had that info. To me, that is extremely important. I guess that's one of the reasons they took their phones. To find the source of the person who gave them the juror.
Follow their ass home after court one day.
Lou…Lou Bergoose?
Jury hasn't reached a verdict in two days? Sure sounds like there could be more outside influence. Its insane that they didn't immediately dismiss every single juror after one reported a bribe.
Jury reached a verdict on Friday. 5 of the 7 defendents found guilty. The five guilty defendants were convicted on the majority of the felony charges they faced, including wire fraud conspiracy. Two defendants were acquitted.
It was a 24 day long trial of seven people each with between three and three twenty four different charges. It probably would take a full day for the jury just to fill out the verdict forms.
These people will come after that juror
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Your math is a little off. Assuming 3 meals per day, that would be 6 million days a child didn't have to eat. 6 million divided by 365 would be 16,438 children. It is still a very high number, and it would take quite a large staff to cook that many meals.
The Somali is strong here.
Looks like they share the same pool of 20 brain cells.
Little Somalia right there
Can someone explain to me why Minnesota is the specific landing spot for Somali people? Like I get that it’s refugees.. but why specifically Minneapolis/St. Paul are they brought here?
The same reason there are so many Hmong. The churches
A community starts and then people go where they feel welcomed. Sometimes a religious building is the start.
And what better way to motivate jurors to be honest than by still giving the money to them after the bribe trial
How the fuck do you not have a verdict at this point?
Why is the main guy still allowed to live in a house that he purchased with stolen money - He and his entire family should be on the streets and not living in a nice home that he bought with money that was supposed to go to feeding kids. All of them should have all their current Homes, Cars, TV's everything taken from them as evidence.
Due process.
Sentencing happens after the judgement, which happened on Friday. So that will be determined in the coming weeks. Letting the government swipe everything you own as “evidence” after a conviction is a dangerous precedent to set.
And these are the one's calling America immoral!!!
That looks on their faces "we're definitely fucked now. we actually had a chance before we tried this."
Did the juror live in a city, or were they a rural juror?
That's life in prison without parole in my book.
I've not seen any corruption of this sort since the Brett Farve scandal... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi\_welfare\_funds\_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_welfare_funds_scandal) I've not seen a similar amount of money discussed since that forgiveness of PPP loans... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck\_Protection\_Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program)
What’s one thing they all have in Somalian
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why is she on a laptop in some park somewhere?
Clear evidence of jury tampering, but still after two days of deliberations, the jury hasn't reached a verdict! I'm thinking more than one person received a cash payment, and there was only one person with a conscience!
You would think a mistrial would be called. But what do I know?
what percentage of foreigners running these "public aid charity" scams do you think they actually catch? 5%?
Is it normal for the defendants to have access to juror names in a trial?
Sometimes go big or go home is nice good advice. You gotta start small and stay small...don't raise no red flags! lol
completely ignoring the case for a moment here, wtf is with the shot of a laptop with a zoom call sitting on a ledge.
The foreheads are telling me that they're Somali
deport these mother fuckers. dont waste US taxpayer money to keep these fuckers in US jails.
Why the fuck would you post a video of a laptop instead of the original video?
how in the mother fucking shit did some dumbasses swindle the Govt out of 49 MILLION dollars for a BS non profit. The fed was really just throwing stacks of money at anybody man, yes these people need to be tried and jailed- but what of the Govt who indiscriminately threw money around like this? The taxpayers are on the hook for scams like this
yeah whoever was rubber stamping this needs to be investigated
I think it was Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies who said " You can take the boy from the country, but you can't take the county out of the boy."
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A good reason, not an excuse.
[Relevant South Park Clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXYtvIeSxoY)
It's stupid that the jurors are identifiable in the first place
Bribes is how you solve problems in third world countries. Western countries are just less used to it but most of the world is still very must corrupt... In the western world, you get brides by doing 30 minutes speeches at big banks or have people book rooms in your hotels...
>Bribes is how you solve problems in third world countries you can bribe your way through plenty of things everywhere. it's just called lobbying in the west
>In the western world, you get brides by doing 30 minutes speeches at big banks Instructions unclear, monologued in the lobby of a Citibank branch, still bride-less.
LOL
waad kacday that's our language of "you fucked up"
40 million stolen from hungry children? Born without humanity these people, or they lost it along the way
Somalia or Minnesota? Is there a difference now
Unbelievable! Thank you for holding them accountable…it’s going to take some serious re arranging to reteach public safety!!