Ripe with Fraud: Obamaphone

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Any gift from the treasury, no matter what it is, is subject to fraud.  When the government offers something for "free", people are bound to try and take advantage.  An unfortunate reality, and one of the reasons socialism can never work.

The “Obamaphone” program is one such program that has suffered from fraud.  A government report released found more than a third of enrollees may not have even been qualified for the phones that were supposed to only go to those who were too poor to afford having a cell phone.

With fraud comes government waste, and the Obama administration was full of it.

In addition to the fraud regarding people gaining access to the program when they shouldn't have, the program also stashed approximately $9 billion in assets in private bank accounts rather than with the federal treasury.  As with many failed and bogus programs, the lack of oversight made a bad situation worse.

About 10.6 million people have an Obamaphone, but 36 percent of them may not qualify, investigators said after sampling the population and finding a huge chunk of people couldn’t prove they were eligible.

More than 5,500 people were found to be enrolled for two phones, while the program was paying for nearly 6,400 phones for persons the government has listed as having died.

Investigators also submitted fraudulent applications to see what would happen, and 12 of the 19 phone carriers they applied to approved a phone.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary