Fraud, As American As Apple Pie - But For Somalis? Scams Are A Lot Easier Than Running Pirate Gun Boats

Fraud is as American as apple pie.  There have been con artists, tricksters, shysters, shell games, Ponzi and get-rich-quick schemes, and snake oil salesmen since the founding of the Republic, and surely before then under the noses of our British masters. 

 

Just in the past few years we have seen the likes of Jeffrey Skilling and Enron, Bernie Madoff, and Rudy Kurniawan, the Indonesian wunderkind who bilked millions out of credulous investors in a magnificent wine fraud.  Rudy bought decent but unremarkable surplus wine stored in casks in Europe, bottled it under skillfully aged labels, and sold it to wine aficionados at sky-high prices, knowing they would never open the bottles but sell them to equally credulous investors for a profit. 

He had a remarkably sophisticated taste, and could identify vineyard, terroir, and year with accuracy.  He was eloquent in his description of each and every one of these wines, discovering fragrances, hints, and suggestions that captured the complexities of the very best wines.  So when he sold his dreck to his growing circle of friends, they believed him.

Bernie Madoff did the same thing with his Jewish friends, associates, and colleagues.  He dazzled them with his knowledge of the most arcane financial products, convinced them of his ability to quadruple their investment in a matter of months, relied on his Jewishness and standing within the Jewish community to add credibility, and made millions. 

Skilling was a master of the creative financial instrument, and found ingenious ways to create fabulous empires of wealth built on nothing but air, ships will come in promises, and trickery so complex that the SEC went on wild goose chases for years before untangling his fraudulent web. 

Snake oil salesmen - itinerant hawkers of patent medicine so popular in the 19th century - were equally adept at snookering the rubes from the farm.  They did it with testimonials, a silver tongue, modest prices, and quick getaways. 

P.T. Barnum, master of the three ring circus famously said, 'A sucker is born every minute', and his freak shows, displaying the most impossible human and animal creations, raked in thousands.  

Abraham Lincoln stated that you can fool most of the people most of the time, but then added the caveat, 'but not all of the people all of the time'  - enough truth and enough currency to cover the legions of smalltime crooks and conmen throughout the land. 

Municipal fraud in America is common, and much of it goes unnoticed.  Unneeded sidewalks are rebuilt, alleys resurfaced, roads reconfigured to accommodate non-existent bike traffic, millions of dollars are poured into social welfare schemes which have never worked and never will while enriching managers and sponsors. 

Infrastructure projects worldwide are known for their endemic corruption.  Every contractor whether in India or America cuts corners here and there, a little less cement in the concrete, some 'impurities' in the asphalt, cost 'overruns' costing millions, planned obsolescence so that the whole kit-and-kaboodle will have to be rebuilt, resurfaced, reconstructed in a few years. 

Government spending is the right place to look for massive fraud. Government officials are the only ones who can spend money without measuring performance and without consequence - i.e. without accountability. There is no bottom line as there is in the private sector, no CFO breathing down your neck to see that upward tick in profits and out-the-door consequences for intimations of a downward spiral.  Government can spend like a drunken sailor without anyone paying attention.  Good intention is all that counts. 

Which is what led to the COVID-era massive fraud in Minnesota. The Biden administration poured billions of unaccountable money into schemes to mitigate the effects of the virus.  Everybody got a piece because like AIDS, the disease was said to be everyone's, and the largesse from treasury coffers was to be spread widely.  

The Administration knew that through these funds it could create an increased and even more widespread dependency on the federal government.  More than ever government would be the nation's caretaker always acting in the public interest, the place where all Americans should turn in times of need.  COVID was a way to help build the state. 

 

Everyone is heir to the American history of fraud, but some are more particularly quick on the trigger.  The Somalis are known for three things - intractable civil violence, endemic government corruption, and offshore pirating.  Somalia is the example of a failed state.  Anyone in Somalia who expects to survive let alone prosper, must resort to thievery, extortion, intimidation, and manipulation.  Those who came to America, imbued with this ethos, saw the most amazing cornucopia before their very eyes.  Not only would they be able to carry out Somali tradition of thievery, but instead of making thousands, they could make millions with no one noticing. 

It's the same thing with Nigerians who have perfected credit fraud to an art, and before Congress caught on had robbed billions from unsuspecting Americans.  Most international development consultants have 'No Nigeria' clauses in their contracts to avoid spending even a day in a country where shakedowns begin and end at the airport - a country so corrupt that even Nigerians are amazed at the depth, extent, and yes, genius of the schemes. 

So it is no surprise to anyone that the Minnesota fraud ring has siphoned millions of federal, state, and local funds into Somali pockets and into those of their countrymen in Mogadishu.  If Nigerians could do it, so could Somalis.  Oh, but moralists say, the Somalis were worse because they took food from the mouths of babes, targeting childcare programs.  The Nigerians were democratic.  Their victims ranged from top-level World Bank officers to post office workers. 

The Minnesota COVID fraud is the perfect storm - a naturally, historically credulous  American population who thinks doing good is ipso facto good; a federal administration anxious to spread walkin' around money to build its own reputation and influence; and a corrupt ethnic group for whom bilking, robbing, and pilfering is endemic.

The American Left led by arch-ur-Somali Congresswoman Ilhan Omar insist that this is not a Somali problem, and any attempt to tar the Somali community with the same brush is racist; but this is like saying that ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab terrorism is not Islamic.  Identity politics, invented by the Left to avoid responsibility for racial and ethnic dysfunction and anti-social behavior, is itself a fraud, but out it comes by Omar and her progressive shills. 

A tempest in a teapot, this Minnesota Somali fraud.  Of course it happened, and of course it will happen again.  Perfect storms are not as uncommon as one might think.  Give the Somalis credit.  They saw what was in fact a government fraud - the Biden Administration fearmongering the American public into Orwellian submission - and Americans willingness to roll over, and took advantage of it. Ahh...the American Dream, making it.