Critics of California's fiscal turpitude often wonder why the state can't get its arms around its hemorrhaging pension obligations, its perpetually unbalanced budgets, or its endless union giveaways. As it turns out, it's not just a matter of scale. California government can't even get the small things write; small things like not writing tens of thousands of dollars worth of checks to a convicted murderer.
A convicted killer's father and two girlfriends were charged today with allegedly accepting and cashing more than $20,000 in fraudulent unemployment checks on the inmate's behalf and putting the money in jail accounts for him and other gang members
According to prosecutors, Juan Garcia, [Sandra] Jaimez and [Cynthia] Limas submitted phony unemployment insurance claims for the younger Garcia and cashed the biweekly checks from the California Economic Development Department between October 2008 and August 2010, even though Anthony Garcia was incarcerated and ineligible to receive unemployment.
Kudos to those who caught on to this scheme. And shame on the bureaucrats who allowed taxpayer money to be distributed to murderers and gang members for nearly two years because of sheer intertia -- any accurate tally of the waste involved here would include their paychecks.
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