FBI Indicts Three Alabama Women On Fraudulent Applications For Disaster Aid
Posted: Monday, September 05, 2011
by Joel Hendon
http://hebronics.org/index.html
Although some of the crimes might seem small or petty, the FBI has taken the approach that even the smallest of fraud instances involved when help is being allotted to victims of natural disasters, should be prosecuted. This is as it should be. There are few crimes which are sorrier in nature than that which tries to take advantage of help for people in dire need.
Birmingham’s U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance; Department of Homeland Security-Office of Inspector General Special Agent in Charge James E. Ward; and FBI Special Agent in Charge Patrick Maley announced they have filed indictments for three separate cases of fraud during the assistance period following the tornadoes. One of these three suspects had submitted that she lost her home, her father and her infant daughter in the storm.
Charged in these cases were Libra Nikosha Green, 31, of Birmingham; Sabrita Latrice Goodwin, 24, of Bessemer; and Evegelin Wilson Coleman, 44, of Tuscaloosa.
Green was the suspect who falsely claimed to a FEMA representative that she had lived on Cherry Street in Birmingham where her house was badly damaged and that her father and baby daughter had died in the storm.
Goodwin is charged with presenting a FEMA inspector a Bessemer Fire Department report that had been altered to falsely claim a May fire which damaged her Bessemer residence resulted from electrical wiring problems caused by the power outage from the April tornadoes.
Coleman is charged with obtaining disaster benefits as a result of a false representation, and with making a false statement to FEMA. Coleman told a FEMA representative, and falsely claimed on an application for disaster funds, that her primary residence was on 28th Avenue East in Tuscaloosa, an area devastated by the tornadoes.
Three separate stories shown to be falsified from three different towns. There was no evidence that there had been any conspiracy or even that the suspects had known one another.
The Justice Department reminds everyone that an indictment of a person only means they are suspected of a crime and are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Or if they plead guilty.
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