fraud – ThursdayAgain

In the US a Georgia animal shelter’s “Lucky Dog” adoption program promised offloading pet owners not to euthanize their dogs for a $100 fee, then killed them (the dogs, not the owners).

Charges against the shelter’s former director, Lowanda “Peanut” Kilby, include theft & racketeering, Rabun County District Attorney Brian Rickman told reporters yesterday.

Pet owners dumped their animals at the Boggs Mountain Humane Shelter for a variety of reasons, including the owners’ failing health, incompatibility with children & failure to blend-in with the new curtains (amongst other reasons), Rickman said.

Having been “guilted” into paying a $100 for a guarantee that the pets would not be killed, the now former-owners received emails & notes from the shelter saying that the pets had been adopted.

“In fact the pets were already dead,” the district attorney said.

The prosecution alleges that “Peanut” received money from the owners of 28 animals who were promised that their pets would not be euthanized. She is also charged with stealing more than $10,500 in shelter funds.

Kilby has turned herself into authorities & has been released on bail, said Rickman.

In an interview on a local TV station, Kilby denied the allegations.

“No kill means no kill,” she told the television station. When presented with the case of one “Lucky Dog” who was euthanized, Kilby said it was because the animal had a failing heart.

I don’t think it was the dog’s heart that was failing.

the acceptable photograph of dead dogs on the web. — The only acceptable photograph of dead dogs on the web.

In Austria a member of the European Parliament is under investigation over dubious expense claims amounting to over €1.3M.

A request made to the European Parliament to waive Hans-Peter Martin’s immunity, by the Vienna prosecutor’s office, says the MEP is guilty of embezzling public funds “illicitly for himself or a third party by fraudulent means”.

“It is suspected that, by using money for the reimbursement of permissible costs for purposes other than those claimed, Dr Hans-Peter Martin has committed crimes of misuse of funding,” said the request.

Martin says the allegations are an invention by political opponents he has exposed wasting public funds.

When quizzed about the details & amounts detailed by the prosecutor, Martin said they were accurate but that no embezzlement was involved.

Among the questionable payments are €832,800 for “public relations work” that the prosecutor claims were to “businessmen who are friends of Dr Hans-Peter Martin & where no services were provided”.

A second issue relates to the employment of a parliamentary assistant at a cost of €67,343 where, the prosecutor say, the individual “never actually carried out any work” for Martin in connection with his parliamentary duties.

The high-point of the claims is €2,200 described in expense claims as being for an “elephant”.

So that must be the famous “elephant in the room.”