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Notes -
I want to briefly talk about the massive Somali fraud network in Minnesota. UPDATE adding a more reputable source. Apparently Somalis have committed welfare fraud at least half a billion, maybe more, over the last couple decades. Much of it going home to Somalia to fund terrorist groups.
The surprising thing, looking into it, is that this seems to have been a bit of an open secret? Independent journalists were reporting on it for a while, and nobody seemed to care.
I think this story represents an overall change in the cultural climate, where this sort of information is finally becoming more popular to discuss. I'm reminded of the Rotherham scandal in the U.K. as well. Where there has been a major scandal involving mostly minority/immigrant groups that was covered up or just not really discussed, due to the Problematic nature.
I'm curious if this trend will continue moving forward, and we can perhaps have a more honest conversation about immigration and assimilation? We'll see...
I don't see why it would. We haven't had a national conversation about fraud in the Orthodox Jewish community and there are still hebrew signs in the Hudson valley; or any conversation at all about fraud among Baptist churches.
Here's a bonus case with a pastor who stole someone's identity, defrauded the military through fake education funds, and then abused a minor girl at the church.
The problem is really that any high trust group can defraud the government pretty easily.
In general, trusting your family is a pretty major hack against the American legal system. The entire system is built around not trusting your family. Being high trust enough to put income, properties, or businesses in the name of your family members can get you out of taxes, into subsidies, and boy does it make for a fun divorce to untangle. Immigrants of all kinds are notorious for this, as are small family businesses. Combine the two and there goes your week.
A Russian with a small business is a nightmare in a divorce case. The house is half in his name and half in his mother's, but the down payment was supposedly lent to him by his brother, but no one has any documentation of that money ever being transferred. The business is a partnership with an uncle, and no one knows where the money came from or where it goes.
A local family, our local feudal lords around here, when one of the sons got divorced, his wife was surprised to find out that while she was under the impression they'd been living a normal upper middle class life with a house and two cars, actually they had almost no assets, that the house and the cars belonged to his father and they had effectively no equity in anything.
Another local family filed tax returns for family members who never worked for the business, for income that the family members in question never actually received, in order to distribute income taxes around in some way or other.
Anyone who looks around will have similar stories. If you can trust each other enough to count on getting what's yours later, then the government has a lot of trouble pinning you down.
It's hard not to be horrified of all that goes on. The government tax incentives and welfare schemes that slosh around are insane.
Yep, I remember a high profile case of Moroccan soccer player who got out of divorce settlement worth $70 million, as apparently everything was owned by his mother.
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