Posts

SEIU Worker Asks Members To Falsify Signatures To Sink Anti-Union Measure

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Service International Employees Union – the same union that will be shutting down traffic around Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving Eve – has admitted that a staffer requested that union members stack a legal petition with fake names to sink it. The petition is the brainchild of former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who wants to put a measure revising public service employee union pensions on the ballot.

Today, SEIU acknowledged that one of its work site organizers had violated the law in order to push its agenda. The SEIU 721 union spokesman explained:

SEIU 721 in no way recommends that its members or anyone else falsify signatures on any petition. We are firmly against that kind of behavior. The email in question was sent without the knowledge of the union’s leadership. The person who sent the email has been disciplined for his action.

According to Thompson, the email probably reached “very few” members. Thompson added that it was sent from a personal, not a work email, and wasn’t an official union communication. Yeah, right.

Read more from this story HERE.

More Than 300 D.C. Public Employees Busted in Unemployment Fraud Scheme

/1 Comment/in , /by

The District said Monday that hundreds of city workers took nearly $2 million in fraudulent unemployment benefits, a scandal that roiled the D.C. government earlier this year and prompted widespread firings and criminal charges.

Lisa Mallory, the director of the D.C. Department of Employment Services, told the D.C. Council that her agency had detected $1.9 million in overpayments to District workers who collected unemployment benefits while on the city’s payroll.

“This probe continues to be ongoing,” said Mallory, who has credited access to a specialized database for the initial detection of the fraud.
Mallory’s department has referred 318 cases to the District’s inspector general, some of which have resulted in civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. Other cases are pending.

“Many of these individuals did lose their employment,” Mallory said. “There are several cases in front of the U.S. attorney, and those will take their course.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Government gone wild: IRS paying billions in fraudulent tax refunds

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo credit: saturnism

The IRS is paying out billions of dollars in fraudulent tax refunds to identity thieves; a problem that the tax service’s inspector general told CNBC is a “growing problem” involving numbers that are increasing “exponentially.”

In a new report to be issued Thursday, the inspector general for the IRS says that tax thieves are stealing the identities of taxpayers and then filing bogus returns on their behalf and collecting fraudulent refunds as a result.

The inspector general estimates that the IRS could issue as much as $21 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the next five years.

The scam is so rampant that thieves are apparently sending in false returns in bulk without even bothering to change the mailing address on the returns. The inspector general said it found one residential address in Lansing, Michigan that was the source of an astonishing 2,137 tax returns, and to which the IRS directed more than $3.3 million in potentially fraudulent refunds.

In another case, a single residential address in Chicago was the source of 765 tax returns, generating more than $900,000 in potentially fraudulent refunds, the report said.

Read more from this story HERE.