Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Fraud is Big Business in Florida

FloridaTrend.com recently took a look at the huge business of fraud in south Florida. Illegal activity ($36 billion/year) and occupational fraud ($36 billion/year) ranking 7th and 8th in contribution to the Florida GDP of $713.5 billion, fraud is a big business. Experts believe that the majority of fraud committed in this state is from white-collar petty crimes.

Some officials believe that 20% of the nation’s Medicare fraud occurs in the state, which amounts to $12 billion a year coming into the economy. Most of the money in this category is hard to recognize because the money comes from checks written by the government.

Money laundering is a second source of fraud. It is believed that $25 billion a year is laundered in and out of the state of Florida. Sources of the money are believed to come from drugs, fraud schemes, and possibly even terrorism finance. Experts believe $1.5 billion is laundered from Latin America and the Caribbean.



Share this article with your social network, just click below to share now!


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Medicare Fraud has become easier then smuggling drugs? It certainly is safer. $60 billion in total a year is lost to fraudsters, that is an unbelievable amount of fraud the US taxpayer is spporting.

John W. Schilling
Author - Undercover
http:\\ethicsolutionsllc.com

Unknown said...

John --

Thank for reading our blog. I agree, that is a lot of tax money that US workers contribute to fraud.

Jennifer