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D.C. property tax refund fraud
In a Washington Post analysis of Washington D.C. city records, Dan Keating and Carol D. Loennig report that seven years’ worth of fraudulent property tax funds have cost the District $31.7 million. On Nov. 7, the former manager of property tax refunds was arrested and charged for the refund fraud, along with five others. Federal…
Read MoreYoung hunters twice as likely to cause accidents in Wisconsin
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Ben Poston analyzed hunting accident records kept by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and found that in the past five years, hunters 21 and younger were more than twice as likely to cause accidents than all other hunters. The analysis also found that deer drives — “a method in which…
Read MoreSome Boy Scouts leaders earn six-figure salaries
Lee Davidson of the (Salt Lake City) Deseret Morning News analyzed nearly 300 tax returns, known as IRS Form 990, filed by tax-exempt organization and found that Boy Scouts both in Utah and across the U.S. tend to pay their top executives significantly more than do other nonprofit groups that serve youths. It’s a topic…
Read MoreScam hits struggling homeowners
A mortgage scam has deceived homeowners in 27 states, including at least 17 in New Jersey. Jason Method of the (Neptune, N.J.) Asbury Park Press investigated the fraud, in which a company contacted homeowners who had been struggling to make their payments. The company promised them a deal: An investor would temporarily buy they property…
Read MoreConvicted killers in Texas receive probation
After a Texas man convicted of shooting an unarmed prostitute received probation, Brooks Egerton and Reese Dunklin of The Dallas Morning News decided to see whether his sentence was a fluke or representative of a larger trend. They analyzed thousands of government records, some of which came from confidential criminal files and interviewed more than…
Read MoreInvestigative journalism challenged in China
The Washington Post‘s Edward Cody reports on the case of Pang Jiaoming, a reporter in China who lost his job in the wake of publishing investigative stories “reporting that substandard coal ash was being used in construction of a showcase railroad, the $12 billion high-speed line running 500 miles.” The Post says that due to…
Read MoreMore mayhem in the Meadowlands
In an ongoing investigation, Jeff Pillets of The Record in Bergen County, N.J., uncovered how a taxpayer-supported plan to reclaim the North Jersey Meadowlands instead reopened the infamous garbage dumps to millions of cubic yards of contaminated waste. A review of some 10,000 pages of state documents revealed that the site’s developers won a string…
Read MoreChicago transit pension fund in trouble
Stacy Warden of the Chi-town Daily News investigated questionable policies in the Chicago Transportation Authority’s pension fund, raising questions about CTA’s claim that state funding policies had caused its current financial crisis. “Taking the first steps toward repairing the agency’s pension fund, along with paying rapidly increasing employee wages and health care costs, will cost…
Read MoreWhistle-blowers punished by system meant to protect them
A collaborative six-month investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting and Salon.com details the failings of whistleblower courts, which are intended to protect employees who speak out against corruption and abuses in government agencies. Instead, this forum is used to punish those who speak out for the public good. The investigation “found that federal whistle-blowers…
Read MoreFelons issued hunting licenses in Wisconsin
Analyzing state data on hunting licenses, Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that dozens of convicted felons in Wisconsin were issued gun-deer hunting licenses last year despite a state law that bans them for life from possessing firearms. Felons with armed robbery, rape and weapons convictions all bought gun-deer licenses in Wisconsin in…
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