Disasters bring out the slime as well as the heros

i was driving home from work tonight, and i heard on the radio some woman in stockton was arrested and charged with 3 felonies. her crime? she claimed to be a hurricane katrina victim from new orleans, and was given somewhere close to $1000.00 in emergency funds, food, clothes, and i think they said shelter. except, she's from stockton, has been living in stockton for a while, and probably couldn't find new orleans on a map if you blanked out everything else.

and in bakersfield, they busted a bunch of reprobates that worked at a call center set up for distributing the disaster relief funds. makes me sick

and this is just a couple of instances, here in CALIFORNIA, a long ways away from anywhere that even saw a cloud from the hurricanes. imagine the fraud and thievery going on in the thick of it. when people are really hurting, and society opens their hearts and wallets, it's sickening to think there is a segment in our country that sees opportunity to rip off the system. the folks that really need it may not get the help offered, because some low lifes decided they could make an easy killing by relying on the goodness of others. vigilance committees of old might help solve some of these problems. nothing like a good hanging at the outskirts of town to get your message across. it sure as hell won't be the government that regulates this fairly. they are so swamped right now you could probably convince FEMA of anything. or else it will get so difficult to distribute assistance because of the checks placed in the system to avoid fraud.
either way, the ones that really need the help will probably not get it, or have to jump through a plethora of hoops, at a time when they need a hand, not a back hand slap.