As the scale and frequency of major disasters escalate, millions of dollars in federal, state and insurance payments intended for recovery efforts are being stolen by fraudsters taking advantage of chaos and the pipeline of aid flowing into the stricken areas.
Last year, Olanrewajua A. Beyioku, also known as “Papa Smith Morgan,” was charged with wire fraud after allegedly devising a scheme to defraud the American Red Cross.
The Gary, Indiana, resident used reference codes intended for nine households affected by Hurricane Harvey to obtain $3,600 in relief funds.
Beyioku was one of 3,300 identified cases of fraudulently collecting reference codes that resulted in a loss of more than $1.3 million to the Red Cross.
After Gulf Coast flooding in 2016, Renata Foreman of Independence, Louisiana, submitted false claims from multiple locations and made more than 50 fraudulent applications using stolen identities to obtain Disaster Unemployment Assistance funds from the Louisiana Workforce Commission.