Ultimate Fighting Championship Pits Nigerian Immigrant Against White Trump Supporter

This is not a joke!  A December UFC welterweight championship fight will feature the son of a Nigerian immigrant who happens to be serving a 15-year sentence for stealing from taxpayers through Medicare/Medicaid fraud.

Given an award by the Republican National Committee for “Businessman of the Year” during the Bush Administration for his “successful” ambulance companies, Muhammed Usman was sentenced to prison in 2012 for fraudulent billing practices at his two companies.

His son Kamaru “The Nigerian Nightmare” Usman faces the UFC’s “Ultimate Villain” Colby Covington “a relentlessly vocal champion of President Donald Trump” in a December Ultimate Fighting Championship match up.

Here is some of the story  where the reporter gives details about Muhammed’s scam and questions (or asks the reader to question) whether he deserves such a lengthy sentence when his partners in crime are Americans who got lesser sentences, and heck, after all they only fraudulently billed taxpayers for $3.6 million.

Regular readers will notice that again we are talking about Nigerian fraudsters who got into the US and we are never told how, through which legal program they gained access to the “American dream?”  Or was their entrance to the US illegal in the first place?

From The Body Lock:

(emphasis is mine)

The Nigerian-American Nightmare: The remarkable story of Kamaru Usman’s father

No stranger to variety, the podcast of UFC commentator Joe Rogan, The Joe Rogan Experience, has been the launchpad for countless remarkable stories that span a gamut of topics from bowhunting, to artificial intelligence, to zany conspiracy theories, and everything in between.

One of the podcast’s more fascinating discussions was provided by UFC welterweight champion Kamaru “The Nigerian Nightmare” Usman: during his appearance on the show, Usman made it known that his father, Muhammed Usman, was serving a 15-year sentence in a federal penitentiary for crimes Kamaru believes his father didn’t commit.

Kamaru Usman’s anecdote left the MMA [Mixed Martial Arts—ed]  fan base intrigued and perplexed; how was the fact that the father of the UFC welterweight champion was serving such a lengthy sentence just coming to light? What was the chain of events that led to Mr. Usman’s incarceration? What did he do that got him a 15-year sentence? And, perhaps the most contentious question of all, does Muhammed Usman deserve to be in prison?

Some of these questions can be objectively answered; the last cannot. With an understanding of the chain of events that led to the incarceration, an explanation of the particularly nuanced legal statutes that affected the sentencing, and a consideration of the larger societal questions at play, we leave you to make your own judgment about the ethicality of Muhammed Usman’s imprisonment.

Muhammed Usman immigrated to the United States from his home country of Nigeria in 1989. After gaining citizenship in 1996, Usman followed in the footsteps of the entrepreneurial immigrants that came before him, embarking down the well-walked path towards The American Dream. Usman founded a pair of ambulance companies — Royal Ambulance (established in 2003) and First Choice EMS (established in 2005) — that were so successful he was awarded the Republican National Committee’s “Who’s Who Businessman of the Year.”

You can read the lengthy discussion of Usman’s illegal activity that ended in his being sentenced to 15 years in the slammer (of course at great expense to taxpayers), here.  (As told by his son!).

The Body Lock story then continues…..

Sports and politics are notoriously contentious, so a story such as Muhammed Usman’s where the two collide has generated bellicose debate: some see Muhammed Usman as a criminal conspirator, rightfully punished with an appropriate implementation of justice; others see a victim of a dysfunctional justice system that wrongfully imprisoned the American Dream incarnate after he was scapegoated by his native-born partners for a crime he had no hand in committing.

[….]

Regardless of which perspective one takes, Mr. Usman’s saga is undeniably being contemplated through the cultural lens of the time in which his son exposed it: while sentenced back in 2012, Mr. Usman’s story encapsulates a spectrum of societal quandaries that America struggles to answer today: encompassed by the issues of race, immigration, questions of over-prosecution in the justice system, government-funded health insurance (and therefore its potential for abuse), the case of Muhammed Usman serves as a Rorschach Test for one’s political beliefs; a fitting test given who Muhammed Usman’s son will be fighting next.

In a development fit for the final act of a Hollywood blockbuster, it was recently announced Kamaru Usman will be defending his welterweight UFC belt against Colby Covington at UFC 245. Covington — a relentlessly vocal champion of President Donald Trump — has modified the President’s strategy of using bigotted rhetoric to galvanize his political supporters fit his own objective: by infusing the “heel” persona of a 1980’s professional wrestler with the modern political rhetoric detested by many, Covington has positioned himself as the “UFC’s ultimate villain,” energizing supporters and detractors alike and drawing attention to his bouts.

Regardless of Covington’s motives for his antics, his behavior is indisputably atrocious: racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogynism aren’t bugs for Covington, they’re features. Most notoriously, after telling a Brazilian crowd: “Brazil you’re a dump. All you filthy animals suck,” Covington took to Instagram to explain he’s not a racist, but a “realist:” a common trope racists use to justify racism.

While Colby Covington has successfully increased his relevancy by manifesting the MAGA-movement into a cage fighter, Kamaru Usman seeks to be its, and Covington’s, antithesis. Vowing to “put the wrath of every immigrant” (including his father),on Colby Covington, UFC 245 will be an appropriate culmination to the story of Muhammed Usman and his family; the “final-battle” of a narrative almost too perfect for the silver screen.

Read it all here.

Of course it’s all hype so more people will watch the December match.

I’m not interested enough to watch, but I’ll be looking to see how the media plays it and who ultimately wins this fight.

New American entrepreneurs?

Have a look at all the posts I’ve written just since January about Nigerian scammers ripping off America and Americans, click here.  I bet no other ethnic group of ‘new Americans’ has been featured here as much as the Nigerians!

Feds Bust Huge ($258 million!) California Medicare/Medicaid Fraud Networks

“Sticking taxpayers with a bill for unnecessary healthcare services will never be tolerated”

(HHS Office of Inspector General)

Perhaps even worse than the millions of taxpayer dollars lost to these alleged cheats—medical doctors and other medical professionals—is the fact that they diagnosed people with major illnesses that the patients didn’t have!

Here is the Justice Department’s press statement on the bust last week.

All I could think of as I read the long statement from the DOJ was, just imagine what a run on the treasury there will be if the Dems get Medicare for all!

Here we see that one of the alleged crooked doctors (Dr. Negash Shetty) has a long record of defrauding us.  Of course I couldn’t find a picture or any information on his immigration status, but his name is a common Indian name.

LOL! I did find that in 1996 he hired “celebrity lawyer and law professor Alan M. Dershowitz” to get him out of one of his run-ins with the law.

Here is the Daily Pilot giving us a chronology of Dr. Negash Shetty’s storied career as an on-again, off-again medical doctor in trouble with the law!

H.B. doctor indicted in $135-million Medicare fraud scheme

A Huntington Beach doctor with a history of legal and disciplinary problems is one of seven healthcare professionals accused of participating in a Medicare fraud scheme that netted about $135 million through fraudulent insurance claims, according to federal prosecutors.

See glowing reports from patients about GCC founded by Sara Soulati  who was also charged. https://www.yelp.com/biz/global-cardio-care-inc-inglewood-2

Nagesh Shetty, 74, was indicted Wednesday in connection with the scheme, which involved “medically unnecessary” cardiac treatments and testing through an Inglewood healthcare provider, Global Cardio Care, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

[….]

Shetty was first licensed by the California Medical Board in 1979 and has operated practices in Costa Mesa, West Covina and the West Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, according to documents and online records.

In 1994, Shetty was indicted in federal court on 28 counts of mail fraud on allegations of defrauding a Minnesota-based insurance company through “nonexistent, medically unnecessary or excessive medical treatment.” That case was later transferred to a California district court and charges were eventually dropped, court records show.

In 1996, Shetty was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and fined $40,000 for filing false income tax returns and failing to report more than $400,000 in income over a three-year period in the 1980s, court documents show. At the time of the crimes, Shetty was owner and attending physician of Harbor Newport Medical Clinic in Costa Mesa.

While in prison, Shetty was indicted in 1998 on federal charges alleging that he defrauded military and private health insurance programs.

More charges, then this!

The California Medical Board revoked Shetty’s license in 2000, according to board records. His license to practice medicine also was revoked in New York in 1999 and Washington state in 2001, records show.

In 2005, Shetty petitioned the California board to reinstate his medical certificate. At the time, Shetty was bagging groceries and stocking shelves at a store and said his inability to practice his profession had caused emotional and financial strain for his wife and four children.

He was granted a probationary license, according to a decision by an administrative law judge, with the conditions that he complete an ethics course and a clinical training program, undergo monitoring and be barred from practicing solo, supervising physician assistants and handling any billing matters.

In 2009, Shetty completed his probation and the board reinstated his license.

They reinstated his medical license and he went right back to scamming us!

More here.

 

Be Aware of the Top Ten Scams that Steal from Granny

CNBC recently published a list of the Top Ten Scams that are perpetrated against seniors in the US.

Scams cheat older Americans out of almost $3 billion a year. Here’s what to watch for

Seniors lose an estimated $2.9 billion annually from financial exploitation, according to the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
Screenshot (888)
Impersonating the IRS was the No. 1 scam targeting seniors in 2018.
More than 1,500 seniors across the country contacted the committee’s fraud hotline in 2018; however, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in recent testimony that only 1 in every 24 cases of elder exploitation gets reported.
“Despite that under-reporting, statistically one in every 10 Americans age 65 or older who lives at home will become a victim of abuse,” he wrote.
Here are the top 10 scams targeting seniors last year, according to the Senate aging committee’s 2019 Fraud Book:

For a description of each of the ten, go back to CNBC or the Fraud Book mentioned above.

1. IRS impersonators
2. Robocalls
3. Sweepstakes scam/Jamaican lottery scam
4. Computer tech support fraud
5. Elder financial abuse
6. Grandparent scams
7. Romance frauds
8. Fake Social Security calls
9. Lawsuit or arrest threats
10. Identity theft
 
Identity thieves not only drain bank accounts and charge credit cards, but they also defraud the government and taxpayers by using stolen personal information to submit fraudulent billings to Medicare and Medicaid.
The Senate aging committee recommends that victims place a fraud alert, report identity theft or file a police report if a scam is suspected.

Sit down with elderly relatives and explain the kinds of frauds that they might experience and then take time and report fraud or suspected fraud.
Almost a day doesn’t go by that I don’t get some call about “free” knee braces and such!  How about you?