It’s fashionable to refer to Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam’s research showing that immigration and diversity reduce trust. And yet, high trust multiculturalism thrives in at least one booming aspect of the economy: fraud gangs. Medicaid fraud causes, for example, routinely features a veritable Rainbow Coalition of people who came from all over the world to work together to live their American Dream: ripping off U.S. taxpayers by overcharging cripples for crutches.
Used car fraud, as I learned while serving as juror in 2006, is often slightly less multiracial, but still: the multinationalism glass is quite full. For example, a July Department of Justice press release:
Co-Conspirators Posted Fake Advertisements for Cars, Tricking Victims Nationwide Into Wiring More Than $4.5 Million
Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced the unsealing of an Indictment charging Diyora Ashirova, Elvin Baghir-Pur, Kirill Dedusev, Roman Eliozashvili, Sarkhan Imamverdiyev, Mikheil Inadze, Aziza Jalolova, Elvin Javadzade, Igor Kalinitchev, a/k/a “Irvin Kalinitchev,” Tengiz Khukhiashvili, Yelena Kudaibergenova, Mishel Levinski, Stanislav Lisitskiy, a/k/a “Giedrius Girnius,” Aleksei Livadnyi, Durra Mehdiyeva, Mikhail Morozov, Ielyzaveta NAzina, Gocha Paposhvili, Matiss Puke, Ketevan Sepiashvili, Aleksandr Starikov, Igor Stasovskiy, Nikolay Tupikin, Karlis Vitols, and Melvut Yazici with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.
A handy table at the end sums up the nationalities of the indicted: three Kazakhstanis, three Azerbaijanis, five Georgians, one American, two Ukrainians, seven Russians, and two Latvians, all casting their ancient enmities aside to unite to defraud Americans so they can afford more gold chains.
