New Twist on the Bear Gulch fire raid

[just-jim]

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The article says he was a 14 yr veteran of the Santa Monica FD.

Something still seems hinky about this, though. The couple of instances of fraud/alleged fraud by contractors - that I was on the periphery of - took MANY months to unwind. Federal agencies have their own contracting officers and law enforcement folks who deal with this stuff all the time. I can’t imagine calling in the other Law dogs right away….

[Rideback]

It's a very bizarre twist, I'd note that the Calif IC was only on the job a matter of a couple of weeks. Hopefully an agency other than ICE will be doing the auditing.

[just-jim]

I signed and approved many, many invoices for aircraft used on fires….sometimes running into many 10s of 1000s of $, per day, for one aircraft….and sometimes approving 9 or 10 equal sized invoices, daily, for weeks on end. I can testify that a couple hundred grand worth of false invoicing by contractors on a fire just wouldn’t be possible without the express collusion and participation of the government agent(s) approving the payments. There are several approval levels and reviews, always.

[mister_coffee]

That story sounds so unlikely it is probably true.

[Rideback]

https://thehotshotwakeup.substack.com/p ... irect=true