For a little break from the usual immigrant-run welfare fraud (food stamps and healthcare) we’ve written about lately, here is a story from December (‘pungentpeppers’ found it recently on a Hmong website) about a different sort of fraud.
LOL! I guess you can say that immigrants bring ‘vibrant diversity’ even in their schemes to rip-off Americans.
The Hmong website story is here. But, it is originally from the Star-Tribune:
A childless St. Paul woman allegedly created library cards for 24 imaginary children in order to steal thousands of dollars in video games and DVDs from the Ramsey County library system.
Nhia Vue, who turns 23 Thursday, has been charged in Ramsey County District Court with one count of theft.
According to the complaint, she checked out 50 video games, 41 DVDs and 21 books from different county public library branches between May 13 and June 4. The items were valued at just over $4,100.
The charges said she pawned 46 games and 22 DVDs. Authorities recovered some of the items, which showed signs of tampering. Library labels were peeled off and library markings on the DVDs were blackened with a permanent marker, the charges allege.
“I’ve never had … anyone take advantage of the library system in quite this way,” Library Director Susan Nemitz said. “It’s wildly disappointing.”
[….]
“Vue admitted she doesn’t have any children and each of the accounts she created is for a fictitious person,” the charges said. “Vue claimed her problems started because she is disabled and cannot stand on her foot for a long period of time.
She is surely already on disability and food stamps!
She allegedly told authorities that she knew what she did was wrong, but that she needed money for food and spending.
How does she have a tax return at her apparent level of income?
“I didn’t look at it as stealing,” she said, according to charges. “I looked at it as borrowing. I thought I could pay them back on my taxes.”
Just last month we reported on more serious Hmong crime stories, here.
How many Hmong do you have?
Wikipedia has this summary of the numbers of Hmong living in the US thanks to the refugee resettlement program:
States with the largest Hmong population include: California (86,989; 0.2%), Minnesota (63,619; 1.2%), Wisconsin (47,127; 0.8%), and North Carolina (10,433; 0.1%), Michigan (5,924; 0.1%), Colorado (3,859; 0.1%), Georgia (3,623; 0.03%), Alaska (3,534; 0.5%), Oklahoma (3,369; 0.1%), and Oregon (2,920; 0.1%).[2][8] The metropolitan areas of Fresno and Minneapolis-St. Paul have especially large Hmong communities.[9] The City of Wausau in Wisconsin has the largest Hmong population per capita in the United States. 3,569 Hmong people live in Wausau (9.1% of its population).
Today, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, 260,073 people of Hmong decent reside in the United States up from 186,310 in 2000.[10] The vast majority of the growth since 2000 was from natural increase, except for the admission of a final group of over 15,000 refugees in 2004 and 2005 from Wat Tham Krabok in Thailand. Of the 260,073 Hmong-Americans, 247,595 or 95.2% are Hmong alone, and the remaining 12,478 are mixed Hmong with some other ethnicity or race. The Hmong-American population is among the youngest of all groups in the United States, with the majority being under 30 years old, born after 1980, with most part-Hmong are under 10 years old.[11]