Detroit thread. Post Kwame, Monica, and $1 houses here.

[Savonarola]

Detroit plans to save city by demolishing vacant neighborhoods
Posted: 10:00 AM ET
Jim Acosta - Correspondent, CNN's American Morning
Filed under: Economy •U.S.
Editor's Note: Hit hard by the recession, the once-proud city of Detroit is now a shell of its former self – literally. Parts of Detroit resemble a war zone and the mayor has a radical plan to save the decaying motor city, by shrinking it. Our Jim Acosta has the report.

By Jim Acosta, CNN

(CNN) – This was one of those stories that had me and my producer agonizing over the material left on the cutting room floor. Mostly images that we couldn't squeeze into our story.

Take our drive with Data Driven Detroit's Kurt Metzger. He's the guy who led a team of land surveyors around the city measuring Detroit's urban blight block by block.


During the drive, we saw recently built Habitat for Humanity homes surrounded by vacant houses. We saw an almost brand new playground in another failed neighborhood. The fence around the pristine play set had fallen and the grass was overgrown. No kids in sight. Our cameras didn't exaggerate Detroit's decay. If anything, they couldn't capture it all.

The old Wayne County office building, a historic landmark, in downtown Detroit has fallen on hard times. The county moved its workers out of the building. Now, only a fraction of the structure is used as a preschool. The rest of the building stands vacant.

Vacancy is a plague on much of the city's urban core. We wish we had more time to tell the story of Detroit's once grand train station. It, too, is a sad and empty site. Many of the station's windows are smashed. It ought to be saved.

There's also much more that can be said about one of the voices in our piece, the Reverend Dr. Horace Sheffield. If you ever need a history guide through inner-city Detroit, he's the guy. His father, also a reverend, was a pioneering civil rights leader in the city who marched with Martin Luther King.

The younger Sheffield had plenty of ideas for turning the city around. He'd like to see a summit of church and city leaders search for solutions other than the radical demolition plan put forward by the mayor.

Speaking of the mayor, Dave Bing declined our multiple requests for an interview. His staff said he was simply too busy. It's too bad. We wanted to press Mayor Bing on how he would have accomplished his goal of demolishing 10,000 dangerous residential structures by the end of his term. This plan will result in the removal of scores of residents. It's hard to imagine all of them wanting to go. So the painful process of eminent domain, at some point, will likely be part of the plan's end game.

And finally, apologies to the folks at Hantz Farms. Our interview with the company's president, Mike Score, didn't make it into the piece. Hantz hopes to take much of the open space that's left after Detroit's mass demolition and turn it into the largest urban farm in the world.

Best of luck to them and everybody in Detroit. The people couldn't have been nicer during our stay. I've said it once and I'll say it again... it's hard not to root for Detroit.

I once built a playground in Detroit for Habitat for Humanity. 

Reverend Sheffield has likened Bing's plans to downsize the city to ethnic cleansing.  Maybe we could get UN Peacekeepers.

[Strix]

I have no issues with tearing down old abandoned houses. Rochester has a lot of them (over 2000) because of a falling population with the departure of businesses and downsizing of Kodak over the years. The houses attract criminals who use them as drug dens, flop houses, and gang hangouts. The houses are run down and continually boarded up, so they add nothing to property value or the neighborhood. Destroying the houses would create more "green" space and allow for the creation of parks and public spaces while forcing criminals to move elsewhere.

And, of course, the added benefit of my not having to clear them looking for parolees and absconders. That's just a bonus.

[Savonarola]

The problem, in Detroit, is that demolishing houses is a never ending process.  Our last two mayors made demolishing abandoned homes a priority and before that we had helpful Devil's Nigthers to burn them down.  Even if Bing had the resources to demolish all 40,000 abandoned houses in Detroit there'll be another 10,000 abandoned by the time he's done. 

It's better to demolish some of these houses then leave them all standing; but if there is an expectation that Bing's plans will end blight in Detroit then that is unrealistic.

[Savonarola]

Kilpatrick blew off subpoena
Former mayor called to testify in lawsuit by former bodyguard
Doug Guthrie / The Detroit News
Detroit -- Kwame Kilpatrick was supposed to have testified at an ongoing whistle-blower lawsuit trial brought by one of his police bodyguards, but the former mayor refused last week to accept a subpoena.

Wayne Circuit Court jurors were told Thursday that Kilpatrick had brushed aside a process server April 20 while exiting another Wayne County courtroom shortly after he had been told he was guilty of probation violations.

The subpoena was related to a suit filed by Detroit Police Officer Tony Davis. The suit alleges he was harassed and punished for threatening to tell about illegal activities he saw while guarding Kilpatrick and his family until 2003.

"I told him, 'Mr. Kilpatrick, I have a subpoena for you.' He told me to get out of his way," Timothy Sargent testified before Wayne County Circuit Judge Michael Sapala.

Davis' lawsuit also has alleged salacious details about Kilpatrick's days as mayor, including Davis' recollections about the long-rumored party at the Manoogian Mansion. He said he heard talk of a party that "got out of hand." Davis said he also saw people he believes were drug dealers and gangsters meet with Kilpatrick in his City Hall office.

City lawyers have accused Davis of trying to cash in on the kind of $8.4 million settlement awarded to other whistle-blower cops in connection with the text message scandal. However, the city's attorneys aren't contesting numerous claims Davis made about Kilpatrick's extracurricular behavior while he was the city's leader.

The Detroit Law Department, which fought to keep the text messages secret, now says it is fact that:

• Kilpatrick was "known to be a player or ladies' man."

• Former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty used to visit the mayoral mansion when Kilpatrick's wife, Carlita, was out of town. Davis said he saw Beatty and Kilpatrick embrace and kiss.

• Kilpatrick spent long evening and night hours with Beatty at her home.

• While guarding Kilpatrick, his wife and children at a hotel, Davis watched the former mayor enter a different room down the hall where he met with two "street women."

• Kilpatrick was a frequent guest at a spa in Ferndale, staying long after closing time.

• When an officer found a pair of women's panties inside Kilpatrick's SUV, they were quietly given to Kilpatrick.

• Davis said he witnessed what he called inappropriate conduct with female employees.

Kilpatrick was told last week that he is guilty of probation violations and was warned by a judge to have his affairs in order because he faces jail when he returns May 25 for sentencing.

Sargent said he confronted Kilpatrick twice as he left Circuit Judge David Groner's fourth-floor courtroom last week. Sargent rushed down the stairs to confront Kilpatrick again in front of the courthouse. Kilpatrick, who usually stops on the courthouse steps after his frequent court appearances to make statements to the assembled media, rushed to a waiting car without comment that day.

That wasn't the first time Kilpatrick publically refused service in the Davis case. On Oct. 29, when arriving at Frank Murphy Hall of Justice for a restitution hearing before Groner, Kilpatrick knocked a subpoena out of the hands of another process server. Keith Gant had attempted to give Kilpatrick an order to appear for testimony.

City lawyers on Thursday asked Sapala to throw out Davis' lawsuit. But the judge refused, saying he has heard evidence so far that jurors might use to determine Davis was punished for reporting wrongdoing and that Kilpatrick and his appointees were behind the actions taken against Davis.

Davis volunteered to work on Kilpatrick's first campaign for mayor in 2001. He said he thought serving on Kilpatrick's bodyguard unit would be the pinnacle of his police career. "He manipulated me. He manipulated the city of Detroit. He manipulated his wife," Davis testified

Kwame really was living the dream; it's a shame he got caught. 

[Savonarola]

Hazing, Detroit style:

Student: Frat hazing put him in hospital
George Hunter / The Detroit News
Detroit -- A fraternity's Wayne State University chapter has been suspended and could have its charter revoked following allegations that a 22-year-old pre-medical student was hazed so cruelly he wound up in a hospital for nearly two weeks.

Eric Walker claims he was required to go to a house on Grand Street in west Detroit for 32 consecutive days, where he says he was administered beatings that sometimes lasted several hours as part of his initiation to become a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

"They would hit me all over," said Walker of Ann Arbor. "They would have me recite information I'd learned about history or whatever, and see how I responded under pressure by hitting me with thick paddles and slamming my body with their hands."

 
Walker's attorney said he plans to sue the fraternity for the medical bills incurred because of the beatings. The most severe thrashing, Walker said, occurred in the Grand Street house on March 1, when allegedly dozens of fraternity members from across Michigan assaulted him. Walker said he also was forced to eat dog food.

Later that night, after he'd gone home, Walker said he was horrified to see that his urine was red. A friend drove him to Annapolis Hospital in Wayne. Walker later was transferred to University Hospital in Ann Arbor, where he was treated for kidney failure, among other injuries. He remained in the hospital for 12 days.

"The doctors told me he might not recover," said his mother, Tina Walker. "He was dying."

A prestigious fraternity
Kappa Alpha Psi is a prestigious, African-American based fraternity. Notable members include Michigan Congressman John Conyers, talk show host Tavis Smiley and film director John Singleton.

The chapter on WSU's campus has less than 10 members and no fraternity house, officials said.

Richard Lee Snow, executive director of the Philadelphia-based fraternity, said he is looking into the allegations and insisted that hazing is forbidden according to the organization's bylaws.

"We do not condone hazing," Snow said, declining further comment.

Wayne State Police Chief Anthony Holt said he is close to wrapping up his investigation into the alleged March 1 incident and plans to present information to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office as early as next week.

"I'm very confident the investigation will show that the incident did take place," Holt said. "(Walker's) kidney shut down; he was beaten pretty bad."

Group may lose charter
Holt said the suspension, which was handed down by Wayne State officials as soon as his investigation determined that the allegations had merit, could result in the revocation of the fraternity's charter, which would prevent the organization from being affiliated with the university.

In addition to any criminal punishment, the students involved could also face suspension from the university, Holt said.

There have been at least four other incidents nationwide in the past seven years in which Kappa Alpha Psi chapters were suspended following hazing initiations. On April 1, the fraternity chapter at the University of Central Florida was shut down after a student alleged he was severely beaten with canes.

"If the fraternity officials say they don't know this is going on, that's a bunch of hooey," said Daniel Romano, Walker's attorney. "It's ingrained in the culture.

"This thing that went on the last day (March 1) had people from all over the region; members and alumnus from all over Michigan and Ohio were there, coming by and taking shots at (Walker), hitting him all over his body."

Walker said the house was rented by a member of the fraternity, which does not have property on the Wayne State campus, according to Holt.

Susan Lipkins, a psychologist who gives lectures nationwide about the consequences of hazing, said research shows there has been at least one hazing-related death on a college campus each year since 1970.

"It's like the Army; they break you down so that you lose your identity, and adopt the behavior of the group," Lipkins said.

Breaking point
Walker said he put up with the hazing for several weeks because he felt obligated to his fellow pledges to stick it out.

"I was going to quit at least three or four times, but (elder fraternity members) told us if one person dropped out, nobody in my group would make it," he said. "Also, one of the (pledges) paid the $900 fee (to become a pledge), and I felt I owed it to him to stay."

But following the alleged March 1 incident, Walker said he'd had enough.

"While I was in the hospital, I made up my mind that I wasn't going back," he said. "My (fellow pledges) were the only ones who came to see me; nobody else from the fraternity came to see if I was all right. Only one person called, but he just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to tell anyone what happened.

"That really hit me; I realized that these people didn't care about me."

Walker, who does not have medical insurance, said he received a bill from the U-M hospital for more than $24,000, and expects more bills in the tens of thousands of dollars.

"I expect the medical bills will be significant," Romano said.

Walker said he plans to enroll in another university and continue to study medicine.

"I'm done with fraternities," he said. "I'm just going to concentrate on my studies."

No one does hazing quite as well as historic black fraternities.  When I was an undergrad I was walking home on one of the coldest nights in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  The school's one black fraternity had all their pledges out holding light bulbs over their heads and chanting "Unity."

[Savonarola]

Canada is always keeping the the brown man down:

Moroun to sue over Canada's bridge offer
By JOHN GALLAGHER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel (Matty) Moroun is preparing to file a claim against the Canadian government under the North American Free Trade Agreement for its $550-million offer to fund Michigan's portion of the proposed Detroit River International Crossing bridge.

"The only way the DRIC project will have enough traffic to justify its construction is by diverting traffic from and bankrupting the three existing international crossings in the area: The Ambassador Bridge, Blue Water Bridge and Detroit-Windsor Tunnel," said Patrick Moran, corporate counsel for the Detroit International Bridge Co., which is owned by Moroun.

In a statement released this morning, Moran said Moroun's company would file a NAFTA claim against the Canadian government based on Canada's offer made public Thursday to front Michigan's upfront expenses for the DRIC process.

Moran added that "it is clear that the Canadian government is using its legislative power inappropriately to discriminate against an Arab-American businessman who has owned and operated the Ambassador Bridge for more than 30 years." Moroun's family is of Lebanese descent.

This claim would mark the second NAFTA claim Moroun has filed to challenge the DRIC project. He is also engaged in lawsuits at the state and federal level trying to block the project.

[Ed Anger]

I know somebody who has the bright idea to buy up property in Detroit, thinking either the city will eventually have a revival, or the state/feds will eventually intervene, thus bringing on a revival.

I passed on his bidness proposal. 

[Strix]

No one does hazing quite as well as historic black fraternities.  When I was an undergrad I was walking home on one of the coldest nights in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  The school's one black fraternity had all their pledges out holding light bulbs over their heads and chanting "Unity."

I haven't run across too many non-historic black frats that brand their members. They are a hardcore bunch.

[Savonarola]

It's like Les Miserable, but at a country club rather than a prison ship:

Conyers: 'No seconds' at Camp Cupcake
Ex-Detroit city official prays for Kilpatrick, dislikes the prison food
The Detroit News / The Detroit News
The paper
Some call it Camp Cupcake, but Alderson Federal Prison is no cakewalk, ex-Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers says.

The incarcerated wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers wrote a three-page letter to The Detroit News saying she's keeping her spirits up, prays for the family of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, loves Detroit and hates prison chow.


"It's over-crowded and they barely have food to feed the people," Conyers wrote in the Jan. 12 letter. "The portions are smaller and no seconds when it's something good. Most of the women are here for drugs!"

The chase
Conyers is now known as federal inmate No. 43693-039 after pleading guilty to accepting $6,000 in bribes for switching her vote on a $1.2 billion sludge contract. But she still signs her correspondence "Councilwoman Monica."

In September, she left her home overlooking the Detroit Golf Club for Alderson, a minimum-security prison in West Virginia overlooking the Alleghany Mountains.

Unlike her former top aide, Sam Riddle, who this month was transferred to the medium-security Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina to serve time for bribery, Conyers is doing her bit at a minimum-security prison that looks like a prep school.

Dubbed "Camp Cupcake" for its reputation as one of the cushiest correctional facilities, the 1,128-female inmate facility offers washers, dryers and curling irons; access to pedicures and manicures and windows that open. It also lacks what is standard in most lockups — a razor-wire fence.

"It's not a lot to do here. The main place of employment closed down," wrote Conyers. "I keep busy by knitting, crocheting and (beading) going to church. I am continuing my religious studies on my own. Other than that, it's mainly recreation choices because classes are filled."

But life isn't all Scripture and yarn. Conyers wrote that she yearns for Detroit. Her earliest possible release is May 16, 2013.

"As for me and my family, we are well and they visit often. But it is cold now and snowing so I told them to come back when the weather changes. Safety reasons!" Conyers wrote from the prison that it is an eight-hour drive from Detroit.

"Please tell the Detroiters, I miss helping them and I love them. They have sent me numerous letters and books to read, cards also."

Conyers' letter, written in a curlicue cursive, also displays a fondness for punctuation often deployed by adolescents and the text-message set.

"By the way, how was the auto show, did it rain or snow on the people? (SMH) LOL!" wrote Conyers.

The line is an apparent swipe at her foes during the messy fight over Cobo Center who claimed its roof leaks. The acronyms are teen-speak for "shaking my head" and "laughing out loud."

Conyers didn't respond to a letter that asked more probing questions and her attorney, Douglas Mullkoff, denied a request for an interview. But she could be talking soon.

A judge on Wednesday ordered taxpayers to foot the bill for hotel and travel for Mullkoff next week for a deposition in a case involving her time on the pension board.

Maybe her luck will turn around and she'll end up more like the Count of Monte Christo than Jean Valjean.  I can see her now saying to her adversaries in her moment of triumph "I haz got loot, call me: Sinbad, LOL, LOL, LOL."

[Savonarola]

We stand on the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and dreams, a frontier of unknown opportunities and beliefs in peril. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.

Medicare scams infect Detroit as recruiters use poor to steal millions
DETROIT FREE PRESS

Detroit has become one of the nation's "new frontiers" for Medicare fraud with many scams run by operators fleeing a federal crackdown in Miami.

Authorities say operators use recruiters to target poor men on Detroit streets, at soup kitchens and in homeless shelters. They shuttle them in vans to clinics set up for the scams or run by licensed providers trying to bilk the system for bogus treatments or for care never rendered or needed. Operators take their Medicare information in exchange for $50 or more.

Detroit's unemployment rate makes it a particularly vulnerable target. Authorities have identified at least $120 million in fraudulent billings in metro Detroit.

The businesses investigated include physical therapy clinics, home health care agencies, medical equipment providers and podiatry offices. More regulation and prosecution is needed, some attorneys say.

"It's like banks without an alarm system," said David Haron, a Troy attorney who specializes in Medicare and Medicaid fraud, referring to the ease with which some medical businesses are established.

Since a federal strike force was created in Detroit in 2009, there have been more than 200 arrests, resulting in 60 guilty pleas and eight convictions at trial. Two operators of a Dearborn clinic -- sisters Clara and Caridad Guilarte -- are on a federal most-wanted list after their Dearborn infusion clinic was shut down for fraud.

Yet the recruiters keep coming.

Poor people's Medicare information is being used to bilk the government
A man in white painter's pants and a black parka with a fur-lined hood chatted last week with the poor, mostly homeless men at the Conner Capuchin Soup Kitchen on the east side of Detroit.

It wasn't his first time.

"They are here every day," Marilyn Reyes, assistant manager of the kitchen, said, pointing to the man, one of many Medicare recruiters preying on poor, elderly and frail people in Detroit.

When ordered to leave, the man takes his business to the public sidewalk or to a nearby fast-food restaurant or liquor store, the staff said.

Reyes said one recruiter even threatened her a few months ago when she told him to leave, saying, " 'I'll have you killed.' ''

By the vanloads, these recruiters truck their targets to clinics, doctors' offices or other health care businesses in the suburbs, where their Medicare information is traded for $50 or more. The information is then used to bilk the federal government out of thousands of dollars in fraudulent Medicare billings.

When time doesn't allow for a trip, recruiters take pictures of their targets' red-white-and-blue Medicare cards for use in the scams.

To avoid detection during their recruiting trips, some drivers cover their license plates. Men most often are the targets, as they far outnumber women on the streets and at programs serving homeless people.

These activities continue all over the city, including at both Capuchin Soup Kitchens on the east side. The kitchens serve 1,000 meals a day, mostly to homeless men ranging from recently released prisoners to elderly Medicare beneficiaries.

The Conner Capuchin Soup Kitchen was forced to add a security guard in late February to watch its parking lot, in addition to guards who oversee the kitchen and staff inside. A recruiter mistakenly hit on guard Frank Shannon, a retired Detroit police officer, on his first day on the job, asking for his Medicare information in exchange for $50. He said he gave a bogus number to the man, who left. When he returned another day, he told the man he was a security guard hired to get rid of people like him, saying, "There's a new sheriff in town."

The Meldrum Capuchin Soup Kitchen also employs security guards inside and out, to no avail.

"They were here again today," a guard told Brother Jerry Smith, Capuchin Soup Kitchen executive director, on Thursday.

The aggressiveness and pervasiveness of these soup kitchen recruiters shows the scope of the Medicare fraud problem, despite the nation's biggest effort to end it.

Since March 2007, when the first joint federal task force began investigating Medicare fraud in Miami, 990 people have been charged with filing $2.3 billion in false Medicare billings in nine U.S. cities, including Detroit, where the task force efforts have been expanded. Investigators have identified at least $120 million in fraudulent billings in metro Detroit alone.

Federal officials estimate 3% to 10% of the $3.3 trillion the U.S. will spend on health care in 2012 will be wasted because of fraud and abuse. Cutting fraud and waste is critical to making Medicare solvent for future generations and finding money to offset costs for health reforms.

"In Detroit, and in the eight cities across the nation, our strike forces have been making a real impact," Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement to the Free Press. "We're no longer waiting for criminals to trip up. We're working together ... to identify the bad actors early, tracking the large criminal enterprises and shutting them down.''

As the Miami crackdown intensified, health care providers moved from there to other cities including Detroit, where large populations of poor, elderly and sick people, often with AIDS and other chronic problems, "make a target-rich environment," said Tom Spokaeski, assistant special agent in charge of Detroit's Office of Inspector General, part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Businesses Spokaeski and others have investigated include home health care clinics, podiatry offices, physical therapy businesses and doctors' offices. Some ordered costly tests and expensive prescription drugs or billed for services never rendered, according to federal court records in Detroit.

Others billed for months of physical therapy or home care for people who didn't need any care or needed much less rehabilitation.

With its high unemployment rate, Detroit is a particularly easy target.

On a tour of the Cass Corridor last week, Spokaeski pointed to an area that federal investigators call "the Beach" near Third and Martin Luther King Drive, where dozens of people mill around some days talking to Medicare recruiters waiting for them on vacant lots, outside an aging hotel and near a homeless shelter.

Spokaeski and others have helped arrest more than 120 people in Medicare fraud scams since May 2009, when the joint task force expanded to Detroit. As of last month, 60 of 120 defendants arrested in Detroit have pleaded guilty and another eight have been convicted at trial, according to the Justice Department.

The average prison sentence in Detroit is 41.4 months, with nine people getting stiffer sentences of as much as 10 years.

"Despite our efforts, there is no shortage of cases," said Barbara McQuade, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District in Detroit.

"We want providers to know we are scrutinizing billing records, and people will be brought to justice. We are seeing very strong sentences in these cases. People who just think a slap on the wrist are mistaken. The judges in our court have taken a very harsh view to this kind of activity.''

Federal investigators also have arrested and sentenced some of the recruiters but "the problem is rampant" and issues of attempted assault or trespass typically fall to local police, Spokaeski said. The Detroit Police Department did not return calls for comment.

$2.3 million in Medicare billings in four months
Xpress opened in November 2006 in Livonia. It was set up as a drug infusion clinic to administer high-dose prescription drugs by infusion for complications resulting from AIDS and HIV, hepatitis C and other problems.

Xpress lived up to its name.

Bankrolled by several Miami health care providers who later were charged or sentenced in various scams, it billed Medicare $2.3 million before federal agencies shut it down four months later, according to federal court records.

One of the principal owners of the clinic was Juan De Oleo, 51, of Miami, who was licensed as a physician's assistant in Florida, federal court records show.

De Oleo and his partners had run other infusion clinics in Miami before coming to metro Detroit, federal authorities say.

They set up four infusion clinics -- one in Livonia, two in Dearborn and one in Southfield -- between 2006 and 2007, court records show. One of the Dearborn infusion clinics was run by Clara and Caridad Guilarte, who fled the country when their clinic was shut down for fraud. The two are now on a most-wanted list issued by the inspector general's office in the Department of Health and Human Services.

The government focused its case on the Livonia operations, where it obtained the best records to establish fraud.

To help with the scheme, De Oleo needed a doctor willing to write prescriptions and bill Medicare for costly drugs. Through a newspaper ad, he found one. But the doctor usually appeared so stoned or drunk that De Oleo then convinced his wife, Dr. Rosa Genao, a 52-year-old Miami pediatrician, to help. Genao had been involved in questionable clinic billings in Miami, according to federal court records.

Flying in to Detroit on weekends in the dead of winter, Genao directed the falsification of records to bill Medicare for costly drugs at the Livonia clinic, court records show.

The clinics rendered little care and did not even have an adequate supply of medicines for the amount of drugs they allegedly prescribed, the court records show. In all, the four clinics submitted $11 million in billings to Medicare for about six months of operations, records show.

Three homeless people caught up in the Livonia scheme are among 19 Medicare recipients in Detroit charged in the scams, typically with conspiracy to receive health care kickbacks, a felony. Most have gotten probation, according to the Justice Department.

One was Rodney Woods, who received two years of probation for giving his Medicare information to Xpress.

"Rodney Woods was a truly sick individual'' with AIDS, hepatitis C and other medical problems, said his Detroit attorney, S. Allen Early.

Early said the clinic billed Medicare $82,000 for Woods' care, but the government said Woods got mostly sham treatments or, at most, B12 vitamin shots before a van shuttled him back to Detroit.

"He was more a victim than a participant in the scheme," said Early.

Attorneys at the sentencing for De Oleo and Genao portrayed De Oleo as a silent investor in the clinics and his wife as a reluctant participant.

Letters from their pastor, family and colleagues to federal judge Denise Page Hood said the couple served as marriage counselors at their Mennonite church in Miami and Genao was a volunteer for a program in Miami called Virtuous Women that helped women raise their children.

"I can see you were kind of the rising star of your family," Hood said to Genao, referring to Genao's life growing up in Puerto Rico, attending medical school in the Dominican Republic and struggling to get licensed as a doctor in Florida.

Hood didn't buy the couple's pitch, saying both were more like top-of-the-food-chain perpetrators, compared with "the little guys" her court also has sentenced for Medicare fraud.

She sentenced De Oleo to 10 years in prison and Genao to eight and ordered the couple to pay $1.8 million in restitution.

Attorneys for De Oleo have requested a new trial. Both the husband and wife declined to comment.

De Oleo was taken away in handcuffs after his sentencing, kissing his wife on the cheek as he left the court with two U.S. marshals.

Genao awaits a letter from the federal Bureau of Prisons telling her where to surrender to serve her sentence. She threw herself on the ground under the attorney's table in Hood's courtroom after the verdict, sobbing.

New federal rules and fraud office in Michigan
New federal rules going into effect this month are an attempt to increase scrutiny of providers seeking Medicare numbers that allow them to bill the program, and to conduct unannounced inspections.

Michigan also has a newly created Office of Inspector General within its Medicaid division and has increased prosecution of health care providers who falsely bill the state-administered Medicaid program. But some providers, particularly those who bill private insurers, often can be involved in questionable activities that escape detection if the business is not required to be licensed. Such is the case with home health care agencies, imaging centers and outpatient clinics, for example. A bill to require licensing of home health care agencies awaits a hearing by the state Senate Health Policy Committee.

Still, attorneys complain that more scrutiny is needed, particularly before a business is allowed to open, and more resources are needed to prosecute illegal and questionable activities.

"There needs to be more resources to vet the people" before they open any type of health care business in Michigan, said David Haron, a Troy Medicare and Medicaid fraud attorney.

Medicaid Fraud, the final frontier...

[garbon]

It's like Les Miserable, but at a country club rather than a prison ship:

I'm glad that we can still get her ridiculousness via prison.

[jimmy olsen]

It's like Les Miserable, but at a country club rather than a prison ship:

Conyers: 'No seconds' at Camp Cupcake
Ex-Detroit city official prays for Kilpatrick, dislikes the prison food
The Detroit News / The Detroit News
The paper
Some call it Camp Cupcake, but Alderson Federal Prison is no cakewalk, ex-Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers says.

The incarcerated wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers wrote a three-page letter to The Detroit News saying she's keeping her spirits up, prays for the family of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, loves Detroit and hates prison chow.


"It's over-crowded and they barely have food to feed the people," Conyers wrote in the Jan. 12 letter. "The portions are smaller and no seconds when it's something good. Most of the women are here for drugs!"

No seconds!
The nerve of those people!

[MadImmortalMan]

More bulldozing:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/bank-of-america-detroit-abandoned-homes_n_839817.html

Bank Of America Will Help Demolish Detroit's Abandoned Homes

The Huffington Post  Maxwell Strachan
First Posted: 03/24/11 03:15 PM Updated: 03/25/11 01:30 AM

Bank of America, the country's largest bank by assets, has announced an initiative to demolish one hundred abandoned Detroit homes currently under the bank's ownership, a task that CEO Brian T. Moynihan says will "help 'right-size' the city," according to the Detroit Free Press.

The bank, which estimates the costs at $1 million, says the land plots will be donated to the city "for green space, urban farming or redevelopment."

Bank of America also plans to donate ten renovated homes to Detroit police officers willing to move into one of Mayor Bing's two designated-need neighborhoods, Boston-Edison and East English Village. Mayor Bing hopes to draw police officers -- and eventually firefighters -- back into the neighborhoods they service. Many have left for the suburbs since a bill ended residency requirements for officers in 1999.

Bank of America's announcement comes days after the Census published findings that the population of Detroit, once America's fourth-largest city, has dwindled by 25 percent in the past decade -- and 60 percent since 1950 -- to its lowest level in a century.

That slow exodus, the result of a declining auto industry, has turned once-prosperous neighborhoods into barren wastelands. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that then newly-elected Mayor Dave Bing planned to tear down 10,000 abandoned homes. But even that ambitious goal would only take care of one-ninth of the city's 90,000 abandoned properties, according to Data Driven Detroit.

The glut of empty homes have caused real estate values to plunge. In the past year alone, according to real estate site Trulia, the median price for a Detroit home has fallen by 22 percent to $55,353. In Chicago, its metropolitan neighbor to the west, the median home price is $185,000.

Governor Rick Snyder has been on a campaign to reinvent MIchigan since his election last year. "We cannot successfully transition to the 'New Michigan' if young, talented workers leave our state," Gov. Snyder recently said in response to the recent Census numbers. On Wednesday, he pinpointed international trade as the state's focus going forward.

Translation: We want to get these property tax liabilities off our books asap.

[MadImmortalMan]

Also another creepy photos collection:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/detroit-decline_n_813696.html#218521

[Savonarola]

It takes a nation of millions to hold them back:

Detroit School Board remains defiant
DPS officials stripped of their authority say they'll stay involved
Francis X. Donnelly / The Detroit News
Detroit— The Detroit School Board may have lost its power but it still has inalienable rights.

The board is still free to say what it wants, a member said Monday. It still is free to assemble, said another. It still is free to advocate for residents' rights, said a third.

The board members were reacting to a state measure adopted earlier this month that expanded the power of the board's nemesis, Emergency Manager Robert Bobb.

"Legal authority doesn't give moral authority," said board President Anthony Adams. "No one man or person can do it all by himself."

The board met privately with Bobb and his attorneys Monday to discuss the legal ramifications of the state measure, which was signed by Gov. Rick Snyder on March 16.

The board then discussed its feelings during the public portion of the meeting.

Board attorney George Washington said Bobb and state officials were unhappy when a Wayne Circuit judge ruled in December that Bobb overstepped his authority by taking over academic control of the schools. So the state measure was adopted this month to circumvent the judge's ruling, said Washington.

"What we have is a dictator now," he said.

Bobb said Friday that he will continue working with the board and unions.

But board members were unmoved by such assurances.

Member Elena Herrada said City Council members should watch out because they might be next.

"They can't take away our right to assemble," she said. "They will have to carry us away."

Resident John Hernandez told the board he supported it but his words must have stung the suddenly toothless body.

"Snyder is making puppets of you," he said. "When he does that to you, it makes puppets of us."

"It's meaningless for you to be here when Bobb makes all the decisions."

Board member Reverend David Murray decried what he called "devils in high places."

The school board meetings did resemble a Punch and Judy show, so it's only fitting the Snyder made puppets of them.  In any event I look forward to the glorious thousand year reign of the new Detroit Public School dictator, Robert Bobb.