Free Republic

A serial squatter was sentenced to 20 years for fraud after she’d been evicted nearly three dozen times and racked up thousands in property damage under multiple aliases in Texas and Colorado for decades. Heather Ruybal was slapped with the maximum sentence in Dallas on Aug. 31, after she was found guilty July 27 of felony fraud for using a false name and writing a bad check to lease a house in 2023, Denver7 reported. “This is what she did for a living. Moved into individuals’ homes knowing that she wasn’t going to pay her rent, then exploit the eviction...

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy on Sunday teased an upcoming announcement about the Trump administration’s fraud crackdown. In a post on X, Duffy said there would be “unprecedented fraud crackdown” announcement on Monday. “TOMORROW: UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD CRACKDOWN,” the secretary wrote. In the post, he also tagged Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Justice and the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, suggesting a multi-department effort targeting fraud. Duffy did not disclose details of the announcement, including when or where it will take place, what type of fraud will...

Drive from Buffalo into Genesee County and you will pass fields that have grown corn and soybeans for generations. Soon, thousands of those acres will be covered by steel and glass. New York state is forcing industrial-scale solar plants onto rural communities that never asked for them, and the people who live there are discovering just how little their voice counts when a governor decides differently. The Mandate Behind The Mess.. New York is tearing up rural communities, wiping out wildlife sanctuaries, and burying prime agricultural soil under solar installation in the name of green energy. The root of this...

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said that confidential voter registration information was inadvertently made public during an update to a tool on the Secretary’s website. More than 130,000 confidential voter registrations became accessible to the public. Secretary of State Jena Griswold said the issue occurred when the office updated its “Find My Voter Registration Tool” link on its website on August 14. That update made confidential voter profiles inadvertently available to the public. The mistake was discovered on Tuesday. In a press release, the Secretary of State’s Office said confidential voter details displayed included full name, birth year, party...

A Honduran agitator arrested earlier this year at an anti-ICE protest in Southern California was busted by Homeland Security agents Friday on charges of illegally registering to vote — part of a crackdown on suspected election fraud in California. Darwin Jonathan Rivera Flores, 30, a Honduran national living in the San Fernando Valley, is accused of two felonies related to his false claims of US citizenship to complete voter registration forms, prosecutors say. Rivera Flores’ early-morning arrest outside a health-care center in Ventura is just the beginning of a war on suspected election fraud that has the full support of...

This video, presented by Dr. Steve Turley, discusses a series of recent arrests, indictments, and convictions of various Democratic officials across the United States (0:00 - 1:11). The speaker characterizes these legal actions as a sign of growing accountability within the political system during the current presidential administration. Key cases of political corruption discussed include: Massachusetts: Lawrence Mayor Brian Deena was arrested and indicted on federal charges of wire fraud and money laundering, allegedly misusing over $1.5 million in COVID-19 relief funds (1:26 - 2:21). Massachusetts State Representative Francisco Paulino was also indicted in connection with the same scandal (2:21...

Assuming the ridiculous gushing over a Cambridge conman was not a national Monty Python sketch arranged for tourists, the Jason Arday affair reminded me of one of the most peculiar things about Britain: They’re more woke than the U.S. Which is weird, because the Mother Country still has a monarchy that rules over tens of millions of white subjects. The closest we have to that in America is the NAACP. According to the 2021 census, the U.K. is 2.5% black, but more than half of all its TV advertisements feature black people. (That’s even more lopsided than their representation...

The General Services Administration (GSA) has uncovered more than $13 billion in suspected fraud involving federal contractors. snip The review covers COVID-19 spending, the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program, contractor eligibility, bid rigging, cybersecurity-related false claims, bribery, and other potential contractor misconduct. The GSA cited two cases to show how procurement fraud affects taxpayers and legitimate federal contractors. One involved $73 million in suspected fraud tied to federal contracts reserved for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses and other eligible small businesses. Broadway Electric Inc., Cornerstone Contracting Inc., CEO John Oehler, and President Christian Blake agreed to pay $21.3 million to resolve...

WASHINGTON — A former Southern Poverty Law Center chief finance officer declined to face charges in person that she fraudulently funneled $1.2 million in donor money to white supremacist groups. Heidi Beirich waived her right to appear at a virtual court arraignment in the Middle District of Alabama on 14 felony charges involving alleged wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. Instead, her defense team appeared for the Zoom arraignment and entered a not-guilty plea before US Magistrate Judge Kelly Pate on all counts. Pate set a trial date of Oct. 5, which both prosecutors and Beirich’s defense attorneys indicated...

It has been amusing to watch mainstream journalists (who’ve largely ignored the national debt crisis until it hit a nice round number of $40 trillion) try to explain how it’s all the fault of Middle East wars and tax cuts. Somehow, the fact that federal spending has increased by nearly 300% over the past 25 years never enters the picture. Instead, we get endless accounts about how President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will add $4 trillion to the national debt, and how previous tax cuts by Trump and George W. Bush are supposedly responsible for more than...

WOW 🚨 Foreign born man in California caught setting up fraudulent hospice companies and working with mortuaries to get the names of dead people to bill Medicare - He stole $27 MILLION - California didn’t care he misspelled his hospice company names, one was spelled “Holly Trinity" - He bought a Rolls Royce - His patients were dead people - He billed $33,000 per patient per year “Prosecutors are also charging 2 accomplices — the manager of a mortuary, who gave David Shachar names of people who recently passed in exchange for cash” This is the exact type of fraud...

Jason Arday’s memoir will be released in the UK as planned, his publisher has confirmed. Simon & Schuster announced that Great And Unfortunate Things would be published on Thursday, two weeks after the academic was found dead at his home in south London. Mr Arday had resigned as professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge on Aug 5 after allegations of plagiarism and questions about elements of his life story emerged. He was the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s history.

A New Jersey real estate investor pleaded guilty earlier this week to participating in a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme and fraudulently obtaining more than $1.8 million in COVID-19 relief loans, according to U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer. Officials said 39-year-old Arthur Spitzer, of Toms River, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of bank and wire fraud conspiracy and one count of money laundering in connection with the fraud schemes. According to prosecutors, who cited court documents and statements made in court, in June 2020, Spitzer conspired with Mendel Deutsch and Joshua Feldberger, who are both awaiting sentencing, to make it appear...

I live in New York, which is a very expensive city, so I have become somewhat desensitized to paying stupid amounts of money for normal things. I don’t regularly experience sticker shock because, to some extent, I live inside the sticker shock. But lately, even I have been losing the plot. A few months ago, I paid $35 for tortellini at a restaurant and received four pieces of tortellini. I recently saw supermarket strawberries listed for $15. The other day I was shopping for a trash can and discovered that a distressing percentage of them cost more than $100. And...

Instead of drawing out the big mystery over how much of your money Washington wastes on improper payments, I'll just tell you right up front: In the 20 years between 2003 and 2023, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates the total money blown on payments made in error, or in the wrong amount, or with no documentation (!!!) is $2.7 TRILLION.That's a two followed by a seven followed by 11 zeroes. That's almost double what we spent last year on Medicare/Medicaid combined, or on Social Security. It's triple last year's defense budget. It's almost triple the unconscionable amount we spent...

WASHINGTON — They’re a shady bunch. A California family that swindled $18 million in COVID-19 relief cash to splurge on various trappings — including a Harley-Davidson, diamonds and luxury homes — inspired a Senate crackdown on so-called “fraudster families.” Two of the family members, Richard Ayvazyan and his wife, Marietta Terabelian, cut off their ankle bracelets and ditched their three children via a goodbye note to flee the US after being convicted on fraud charges, before being caught in Montenegro. Years later, the saga inspired Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has led the Senate DOGE Caucus, to push for legislation...

The University of Cambridge must uphold its academic integrity in the wake of Jason Arday’s death, its chancellor has said. Lord Smith of Finsbury called for the institution to be fearless in interrogating accusations of plagiarism and suggestions of academic misconduct. Writing in The Telegraph, the peer said: “We must uphold the importance of academic integrity. * * * Lord Smith, who served as secretary of state for culture, media and sport under Sir Tony Blair, had previously labelled the coverage of Mr Arday a “racist feeding frenzy” and said it was correct for the institution to defend him against...

A Black and reportedly autistic man touted as the youngest scholar of color to serve as a chair at the University of Cambridge was accused of plagiarism before authorities say he took his own life last week. If that were the only headline following professor Jason Arday’s death at age 41, then it would be tragic enough. However, the feeding frenzy that followed the plagiarism allegations, the way Arday was hounded relentlessly online and in print regarding his credentials and biography, and the way his story became an opportunity for the left and right alike to promote their own beliefs...

Right-wing independent journalist Nick Shirley got into a heated exchange when a California official crashed one of his street interviews to sassily accuse him of having a "small penis." The middle-aged man barged into one of Shirley's interviews with a state politician and held up a piece of computer paper reading, "Allegedly Nick Shirley Has a Small Penis. Prove Me Wrong." "Did you guys hear that Nick Shirley has a small penis allegedly?" the man said. Shirley didn't seem thrilled with the interruption. "Wow that's so adult of you," Shirley deadpanned. "You have never seen it. You would never see...

The Trump administration is moving to claw back tens of millions of dollars in pandemic relief that went to celebrities, music artists, and entertainment-industry elites. The Small Business Administration announced Tuesday that it has referred $34 million in outstanding Shuttered Venue Operators Grant(SVOG) debt to the Treasury Department, marking the first time the federal government has referred unresolved debt from the program to the Treasury for collection. The move is part of a broader effort by SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler to recover pandemic-era funds that the agency says were improperly awarded or remain outstanding. “Under the Biden Administration, the SVOG...