Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

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COVID brought a rush of emergency aid programs that weren't very well thought out. In this case, the aid targeted at students likely came through the HEERF, or Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds. Some of the programs are listed here: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/crrsaa.html

The reason these are ripe for fraud is that in many cases they were implemented as direct deposit transfers directly to registered students. They were implemented without checks or controls in order to get the money out ASAP, so anyone who registered as a student and entered the correct information to qualify could get one of those direct deposits.

As far as I can tell, some of the implementation details depended on the college. Scammers likely tried different colleges until they discovered a system that didn't verify anything (California Junior College System) and then started filling out forms to collect the direct deposits.

The fact that scammers are registering with obviously fake names like "Barack Obama" suggests that zero confirmations are being performed at all before this money is distributed.

>> obviously fake names like "Barack Obama"

That doesn't strike me as fake. I've met Osama Bin Laden, at least one of the many people in this world with that name. There are no doubt many people called Gene Simmons who might have issues setting up accounts. James Bond was named after an author of bird books. I bet his descendants still get laughs at school. I met a junior officer once, last name "Planet". Good luck keeping a straight face on parade as they get promoted to Captain.

One wonders if, Major Major style, Captain Planet will be permitted to advance to Major.

I had a coworker who was taking a cab back to the office. The cabbie asked for the address: 123 Main St. He thought it was fake, but not quite 123 Fake St fake.

From the article, the fake names are not even remotely plausible: whole batches of students with "NA" as middle initial, sequential registration numbers, long compound words, and other obvious fakery.

This article has confirmation that colleges did in fact get scammed: https://edsource.org/2021/at-these-california-community-coll...

Thanks for providing the additional details.

This is another example of why aid programs should be universal. Send every citizen a cheque for the same amount, and I mean everyone (even Bezos and Musk). One system built competently. Way lower risk of fraud or corruption (qualifiers exacerbate fraud, gatekeepers policing qualifiers create corruption).

It’s not like Bezos will cash this cheque.

You'd better believe he would certainly cash every cheque that comes his way. He once claimed $4000 tax credit for his children even when he wasn't entitled to, see https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-claimed-tax-credi...

Of course he won't be doing anything so mundane personally, people like him will have teams whose job it is to squeeze every cent.

> he wasn't entitled to

He actually was entitled to it. His earnings in 2011 were below $100,000. I'm all for keeping people honest, but let's not lie.

Ooh, his "earnings"

See, in 2010 he was worth $12.6 billion. In 2011 it was $18.1 billion. Then in 2012 went up to $23.2 billion. These figures apparently come from Forbes, who calculate this stuff.. see https://www.therichest.com/lifestyles/jeff-bezo-years-earned...

I guess he didn't "earn" that money though.. so would definitely have been entitled to a benefit for folk who don't earn so much? My bad...

Look, I’m all down for a wealth tax but under our current system this doesn’t count for anything. If my house doubles in value from $200k to $400k I didn’t make $200k in income in the eyes of the tax man.

The fact that the criteria for the payout was just income and not a combination of income and assets is the fault of the people writing the legislation.

If they have any sense they'd just donate it back.

+1 Million on this!

Our efforts to avoid accidentally helping a rich person via means testing cause for more damage to our ability to help poor and middle class people.

Just give everybody the same amount of cash and leave it at that! There are few enough rich people (almost by definition) that it won't save much to exclude them.

I feel like the public, even in may 2022, just can’t grasp the basic concept of inflation. A better way than dropping cash out of helicopters, or mailing checks, is to give people tax money back in the form of a standard deduction. It’s almost like people have thought about this stuff already.

Any way that you give people more money without also increasing the supply of stuff to buy will generate inflation for those things that those people want to buy. If you target the money to certain people, then the things those people buy will inflate. If you target the money to certain stuff (like education), then that is what will inflate. I don't think changing the mechanism to a standard deduction changes this - except maybe to focus the inflation on taxpayers and what they buy.

This doesn't well thought out either. What if you need to send larger amounts of money? Sending out money to everyone works when it's a reasonably small amount.

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