They really aren’t Maryland men, but likely Nigerians based on their names and the fact that one of the men involved in the scheme purchased cars and shipped them to Nigeria (on your dime)! (Secret decoder ring at work!)
I searched for photos of the accused, but as usual their pictures are no where to be found. (If you find the alleged scammers’ mugshots, please send my way!). Here is the storythat appeared in the Washington Post, but was picked up all over the country. The Nigerian tip-off comes near the end. (Hat tip: TwoLaine)
Prosecutors: Group swindled $8M designated for hurricane and wildfire victims
In Maryland – far from where the California wildfires and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria struck – a group of residents managed to scam the federal government out of $8 million in relief funds designated for those who needed it most, according to prosecutors. Money meant for California wildfire victims ended up in the hands of African scammers! The money was supposed to be for those who needed to rebuild their lives.
In the wake of massive hurricanes and wildfires that pummeled the United States in recent years, the federal government made relief funds available for those who found themselves uprooted amid the rubble of charred or washed-out homes. But in Maryland – far from where the California wildfires and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria struck – a group of residents managed to scam the federal government out of $8 million in relief funds designated for those who needed it most, according to prosecutors. Members of the group, prosecutors allege, were part of a scheme that stole the identity of disaster victims and applied for victim benefits – to pay their own rents, buy cars or make personal purchases.
[….] John Irogho, 38, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to federal prosecutors. Odinaka Ekeocha, 33, of Laurel, Maryland, has been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Their arrests come a few weeks after another Maryland man, Tare Stanley Okirika, 30, of Laurel, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy, admitting that he fraudulently obtained government benefits to pay his rent and for other expenses, according to court documents. To better understand how the scam worked. See the Justice Department Press Release here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/two-maryland-men-facing-federal-indictment-their-roles-scheme-allegedly-stole-government
[….]
The scheme relied heavily on “Green Dot” prepaid cards, according to prosecutors and court records. Those eligible for emergency benefits from the Federal Emergency Management Agency could opt to claim the funding through the cards that can be purchased at local grocery or convenience stores and registered to receive cash, court documents state.
Between 2016 and 2018, the group filed false claims for disaster relief and purchased hundreds of Green Dot cards to claim the money using the stolen identities of victims impacted by various disasters around the country, the government said. The documents do not detail how the stolen identities were obtained.
At least 16 victims from California, Georgia, Florida and Texas were listed in Okirika’s case, according to his indictment. Investigators with the U.S. Secret Service said he used some of the fraudulently obtained money to buy cars and ship them to Nigeria.
More here.
Of course none of these media accounts (or the Justice Department press release!) identify the alleged fraudsters as Nigerians or mention their immigration status.
How did these creeps get in here in the first place?
And, is this what the New American Economy claims is the entrepreneurial spirit migrants bring to America?
Senators Lankford and Rubio: Two of nine Republicans pressing Trump to “increase” number of refugees to be admitted to the US. 18 Senators in total signed the letter.
Responding to the fear that the Trump Administration might really cut the number of refugees to be admitted to the US in FY2020 (which begins on October 1, 2019) to zero, Senator James Lankford (R-OK) and Chris Coons (D-DE) spear-headed a letter to the Secretary of State saying they want the President to “increase” the number of refugees to be admitted.
However, they aren’t willing to say what that number should be! I suspect that is because once a number was discussed their ‘bipartisan’ effort threatened to fall apart.
We assume they want more than the 30,000, the number the President set as the ceiling for the present year. Theresettlement contractorswant 95,000!
Note the usual Leftwing Open Borders Dems are joined by nine Republicans.
See if your Senator is among them.
This is Lankford’s press release yesterday:
Senators Lankford, Coons Lead Letter on Concerns to Eliminate Refugee Cap
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK – Senators James Lankford (R-OK) and Chris Coons (D-DE) led a bipartisan letter with Senators John Thune (R-SD), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Tina Smith (D-MN), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Thomas R. Carper (D-DE), Rob Portman (R-OH), Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY), Susan Collins (R-ME), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Ed Markey (D-MA) to the administration to express concern about reports of a proposed elimination of refugee resettlements for FY2020.
The Senators wrote, “While some Members of Congress have already expressed their displeasure with the FY2019 resettlement cap, and the lower-than-normal admittance numbers for FY2017 and FY2018, eliminating refugee admittance altogether is even more alarming. At a time when we are facing the ‘highest levels of displacement on record,’ according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, we urge you to increase the refugee resettlement cap and to admit as many refugees as possible within that cap. America has a responsibility to promote compassion and democracy around the world through assistance to vulnerable and displaced people.”
Continue reading here. There is a link to the letter there as well.
See that theCatholic News Agencyis on the story. Of course!
I don’t need to tell you what to do, right! If your Senator is one of the Republicans in this gang of nine, let him or her know what you think!
Some of the Rs on this list might think this is a freebie for them, make sure they know you are watching!
“Without a racial classification for Arab-Americans by the U.S. Census Bureau, the population’s mental health goes largely unstudied – particularly in a political climate that threatens it.”
(Science writer Passant Rabie)
Here is an article you likely didn’t see from a publication called ScienceLine. Writer Passant Rabie is an Egyptian living in New York who is concerned about environmental justice as well as race and genetics.
In her article she argues that there should be a box for Arabs on questionnaires and on the census to identify the exact number of Arabs living in America.
She explains that their mental health suffers (even more than she says it already does!) when they must check the “white” box.
Arab-Americans’ mental health suffers due to census box
Within my first week of moving from Egypt to the U.S., I was forced to undergo a series of medical exams and receive a host of vaccinations. But it wasn’t the needles piercing into my left arm that made it an unpleasant welcome to a new country. It was the medical forms.
Before filling out my information at the student health center, I was asked to check an ethnicity box. I hovered my pencil over the given options: white, black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. Not sure if this is the final version of the 2020 Census form.
I struggled to find where I fit in. And then, right there next to the ‘white’ category, it read in parenthesis, “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.” This was awkward. I was about to get a tuberculosis shot in order to stay in a place where I already felt like I didn’t belong. Rather than having our own racial category, U.S. residents originating from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are made to check off “white” on their health forms. Even for someone like me, just arrived and whose jet-lag still hadn’t worn off, checking off that ethnic box was alienating. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for those who had grown up here, and all the times they were made to check off a box that wasn’t theirs.
Beyond cloaking millions of people in invisibility, the lack of a MENA ethnic box has also proven problematic when trying to conduct research on the minority group’s mental health. Approximately 3.7 million Americans claim Arab ancestry, according to estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau. But there is no way to obtain nationwide data on Arab-Americans’ health because they are not identified as an ethnic group. This leads to major health disparities and an inability to provide for the group’s medical and psychological needs.
She tells us that Arabs in America have a lot of mental health problems:
Meanwhile, no MENA box means crucial nation-wide data on the mental health of Arab-Americans’ continues to go unrecorded at a time when anti-Muslim rhetoric and its accompanying mental health stress is on the rise. People of Middle Eastern descent are more prone to psychological distress, as revealed by a 2013 study that was the first to estimate the prevalence of psychological disorders among the MENA population in the U.S. The study compared the mental health disparities between people grouped as ‘non-Hispanic whites,’ revealing that ‘whites’ from the Middle East were twice as likely to report serious psychological distress when compared to whites of European descent. Additionally, Middle-Easterners suffering from psychological distress were less likely to have seen a mental health professional within the last 12 months, according to the study.
Read the whole thing. She says that mental health problems already existed in the Arab community, but we made the problem worse for them after 9/11. Hmmmm?
See that she also blames Trump (who doesn’t!) because she says his administration nixed the idea of a special category for Arabs on the 2020 Census form. What do you think? I do think we need a special category for Arabs so that we can have a count of how many are living in the US.
First, you might want to revisit my post of August 1st, here, where I reported about the ‘welcome’ the African migrants, the asylum seekers who came across the US southern border, are getting in Portland, Maine.
The city raised over $850,000 from charitable donations for the African migrants mostly from the DR Congo*** living in the Portland Expo, and is in the process of figuring out how to best use it for the care of this group who must be out of the Expo by mid-month.
I also took some screenshots of a Twitterpage (yes, it was there on August 1st) attributed to a “Prince Pombo.”
That man, who now says his name is Prince Pombo Mafumba denies that he ever had a Twitter account and reported the fake account to the police.
Below are some snips from the Portland Press Herald story that also appeared on August 1st, thanks to reader Lisa for sending it.
However, before I get to the article, I want to know why Mr. Pombo (aka Mafumba) was not using the name Mafumba in earlier news accounts, like this one in June when he told the Associated Presshis name is Prince Pombo, and why he did a TED talk as Prince Pombo—a TED talk he gave in Portuguese (the primary language of Brazil)—herein 2018.
Dismissing the idea that there are two people named Prince Pombo, we see that he says he is a professor in the TED talk and Mafumba told the Press Herald he is a professor, so there can’t be two Professor Prince Pombos, right?
He was a pretty well-connected ‘refugee’ to have access to TED.
And, then of course, my primary question is why, if he was settled in Brazil with a Brazilian wife and baby, he didn’t ask for asylum there, but instead ‘found his way’ to the US southern border with a group of other Africans who were then dispersed to several US cities including Portland? Lots of questions and I sure hope the first one that an asylum judge asks is: What is your real name? And then, why didn’t you seek asylum in Brazil?
Migrant in Portland ‘shocked’ by fake Twitter account used to smear fellow asylum seekers
When Prince Pombo Mafumba arrived in Portland on June 12, it was the last leg of a yearslong journey that began with his escape from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a long, dangerous journey through Central America to reach the United States. Mafumba, a political science professor, is one of the more than 400 African migrants who crossed the southern U.S. border and came to Portland since June 9 to seek asylum from political persecution and violence in his homeland.
[….]
Unbeknownst to Mafumba, someone had created a fake Twitter account in his name shortly after he was mentioned in a newspaper article. The imposter used a photo from the newspaper as his avatar and began tweeting in broken English about his experience in Portland in an obvious attempt to smear his fellow asylum seekers and stoke xenophobia and anger among Mainers. The account posted repeatedly about Ebola, smears against gay men, boasts of being taken out to restaurants and false expectations that the government would provide him a house and a car. “I was surprised and shocked and scared,” Mafumba said of his reaction when the account was brought to his attention by a leader in the local Congolese community.
He reported the fake account to police. “I never experienced stuff like this before.”[Really? So this is the worst you’ve experienced? I thought you were persecuted in Africa?—ed]
It’s unclear who is behind the fake account. Messages sent to it were not returned this week.
The South Portland Police Department confirmed Thursday that Mafumba had reported the incident and that a fraud investigation was underway.
Mafumba said the comments being attributed to him on the fake Twitter account are the exact opposite of what he truly feels and thinks. He wasn’t even staying in the Portland Expo when the vast majority of the tweets were posted.
Within three days of his arrival, Mafumba, who speaks English, had befriended a couple volunteering at the Portland Expo who offered to let Mafumba’s family – a wife and 1½-year-old daughter – live in their South Portland home.
The article then starts pointing fingers…. Hamdia Ahmed tipped off Twitter. Maine’s Ilhan Omar? https://www.forbes.com/sites/unicefusa/2018/09/05/once-a-refugee-somali-american-hamdia-ahmed-speaks-up-for-migrants/#3a4699d86522
Within the last week, the account was picked up by the Maine First Project, a conservative political organization run by Republican state Rep. Larry Lockman, who has repeatedly pursued anti-immigrant legislation and echoed President Trump’s “fake news” talking points.
[….]
As of Thursday morning, the account was still active, even though several people, including local activist Hamdia Ahmed, have reported it to Twitter.
It was still active when I took the screenshots here.
Sure hope we learn who created the ‘fake’ account!
And, by the way, the Press Herald tells us this:
Asylum seekers are prohibited from working under federal law until at least six months after their asylum application is filed. Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, last month made an emergency rule change to the state General Assistance law to make the newly arrived asylum seekers eligible for vouchers for food, shelter, medicine and other necessities for up to two years.
There is much more in the story, go here, to read it all.
I sure hope we hear how the investigation turns out because there is some fishy stuff going on in Maine involving the African migrants who ‘found their way’ to Portland.
One last thing I keep harping on: ***Just so you don’t forget, we have admitted 50,000 from the DR Congo through theUS Refugee Admissions Program and thousands more through the Diversity Visa Lottery which begs the question: couldn’t they wait their turn for legal admission to the US? This bunch jumped the line!
Trump in Ohio Thursday night where he brought up the Diversity Visa Lottery he once called a “Democrat Lottery System!”
He just loves twisting their tails as he did in the Ohio rally two nights ago. And, I am so glad he brought up the truly insane Diversity Visa Lottery.
Here we have Think Progress, a preeminent Progressive website that’s been around for nearly 15 years (but losing its luster we see) attempting to get your minds right on how the Diversity Visa Lottery really works (according to them) and how Trump is a dummy.
If you missed it, you might first go back and see my postof last week where I told you that the big winners of the insane green card lottery this year were Russia and Egypt—WTH! We don’t have enough Russians and Egyptians in the US yet! Hereis Think Progresson Trump in Ohio,
Trump reveals he has no idea how the diversity visa lottery works
At a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, Thursday night, President Donald Trump painted a wildly inaccurate picture to his supporters of how the diversity visa lottery program works. The diversity visa lottery program awards roughly 50,000 green cards each year to citizens from various underrepresented countries to legally live and work in the United States. In turn, lottery recipients “diversify” the U.S. population: in order to qualify for the lottery, an individual must meet a number of merit-based factors, including a certain level of education or comparable work experience.
Stop right there. In that Miami Herald article I quoted last week, we learned that:
Overall, the winner must have at least a high school diploma or its equivalent, or two years’ work experience over the past five years in an eligible occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience.
Can you imagine how easy it would be to falsify that type of information when the applicants are coming from hellhole third world countries! Think Progressgoes on:
In Trump’s mind, however, the diversity visa lottery functions as some kind of Powerball for criminals.
“And you pick people out of the lottery,” Trump said Thursday night, gesturing as if he were picking names out of a hat. “Well let’s see, this one is a murderer, this one robbed four banks, this one I better not say, this one another murderer, ladies and gentlemen, another murderer.” [LOL! A Trumpian description sure to make Leftwingers heads explode!—ed]
Oh good security screening! Diversity visa poster boy! Sayfullo Saipov!
Because the diversity visa lottery is self-selecting, it is not up to individual countries — as Trump appears to believe — to decide which of its citizens can be considered for a green card. In addition to the education requirements, all recipients of the visa undergo background checks, health examinations, security screenings, and interviews by consular officers before their arrival in the United States.
And, much to my surprise in the very next paragraph reporter Rebekah Entralgo confirms exactly what Trump is saying:
Trump has frequently railed against the diversity visa lottery program, even threatening to eliminate the program altogether in 2017, after a lottery recipient from Uzbekistan carried out an extremist attack in New York City, killing eight people.
